Neville Goddard Workbooks

The Law and
The Promise

G. & J. PUBLISHING CO.
Los Angeles, California. 1961

Neville Goddard

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The Law and The Promise

by Neville Goddard

And now, go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be
for the time to come as a witness forever. — ISAIAH 30:8

I want to express my sincere appreciation to the hundreds of men and women who
have written me, telling me of their use of imagination to create a greater good for
others as well as for themselves; that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's
faith. A faith which was loyal to the unseen reality of their imaginal acts.

The limitation of space does not allow the publication of all the stories in this one
volume. In the difficult task of selecting and organizing this material, Ruth Messenger
and Juleene Brainard have been of invaluable assistance.

—NEVILLE

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The Law and The Promise

by Neville Goddard

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 - THE LAW: Imagining Creates Reality 4

Chapter 2 - DWELL THEREIN 8

Chapter 3 - TURN THE WHEEL BACKWARD 15

Chapter 4 - THERE IS NO FICTION 21

Chapter 5 - SUBTLE THREADS 28

Chapter 6 - VISIONARY FANCY 31

Chapter 7 - MOODS 3 6

Chapter 8 - THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS 40

Chapter 9 - ENTER INTO 4 6

Chapter 10 - THINGS WHICH DO NOT APPEAR 50

Chapter 11 - THE POTTER 53

Chapter 12 - ATTITUDES 58

Chapter 13 - ALL TRIVIA 62

Chapter 14 - THE CREATIVE MOMENT 6 6

Chapter 15 - THE PROMISE: Four Mystical Experiences .. 7 0

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CHAPTER 1

"THE LAW''

IMAGINING CREATES REALITY

" Man is all Imagination. God is Man and exists in us and we in Him . . . The Eternal
Body of Man is the Imagination, that is, God, Himself" — Blake

The purpose of the first portion of this book is to show, through actual true stories,
how imagining creates reality. Science progresses by way of hypotheses tentatively
tested and afterwards accepted or rejected according to the facts of experience. The
claim that imagining creates reality needs no more consideration than is allowed by
science. It proves itself in performance.

The world in which we live is a world of imagination. In fact, life itself is an activity
of imagining, "For Blake," wrote Professor Morrison of the University of St.
Andrews, "the world originates in a divine activity identical with what we know
ourselves as the activity of imagination;" his task being "to open the immortal eyes of
man inward into the worlds of thought, into eternity, ever expanding in the bosom of
God, the Human Imagination."

Nothing appears or continues in being by a power of its own. Events happen because
comparatively stable imaginal activities created them, and they continue in being only
as long as they receive such support. "The secret of imagining," writes Douglas
Fawcett, "is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which the mystic aspires.
Supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight lie in the far-off solution of this
mystery."

When man solves the mystery of imagining, he will have discovered the secret of
causation, and that is: Imagining creates reality. Therefore, the man who is aware of
what he is imagining knows what he is creating; realizes more and more that the
drama of life is imaginal — not physical. All activity is at bottom imaginal. An
awakened Imagination works with a purpose. It creates and conserves the desirable,
and transforms or destroys the undesirable.

Divine imagining and human imagining are not two powers at all, rather one. The
valid distinction which exists between the seeming two lies not in the substance with
which they operate but in the degree of intensity of the operant power itself. Acting at
high tension, an imaginal act is an immediate objective fact. Keyed low, an imaginal
act is realized in a time process. But whether imagination is keyed high or low, it is
the "ultimate, essentially non-objective Reality from which objects are poured forth
like sudden fancies." No object is independent of imagining on some level or levels.
Everything in the world owes its character to imagination on one of its various levels.

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"Objective reality," writes Fichte, "is solely produced through imagination." Objects
seem so independent of our perception of them that we incline to forget that they owe
their origin to imagination. The world in which we live is a world of imagination, and
man — through his imaginal activities — creates the realities and the circumstances of
life; this he does either knowingly or unknowingly.

Men pay too little attention to this priceless gift — The Human Imagination — and a
gift is practically nonexistent unless there is a conscious possession of it and a
readiness to use it. All men possess the power to create reality, but this power sleeps
as though dead, when not consciously exercised. Men live in the very heart of
creation — The Human Imagination — yet are no wiser for what takes place therein.
The future will not be fundamentally different from the imaginal activities of man;
therefore, the individual who can summon at will whatever imaginal activity he
pleases and to whom the visions of his imagination are as real as the forms of nature,
is master of his fate.

The future is the imaginal activity of man in its creative march. Imagining is the
creative power not only of the poet, the artist, the actor and orator, but of the scientist,
the inventor, the merchant and the artisan. Its abuse in unrestrained unlovely image-
making is obvious; but its abuse in undue repression breeds a sterility which robs man
of actual wealth of experience. Imagining novel solutions to ever more complex
problems is far more noble than to run from problems. Life is the continual solution
of a continuously synthetic problem. Imagining creates events. The world, created out
of men's imagining, comprises un-numbered warring beliefs; therefore, there can
never be a perfectly stable or static state. Today's events are bound to disturb
yesterday's established order. Imaginative men and women invariably unsettle a pre-
existing peace of mind.

Do not bow before the dictate of facts and accept life on the basis of the world
without. Assert the supremacy of your Imaginal acts over facts and put all things in
subjection to them. Hold fast to your ideal in your imagination. Nothing can take it
from you but your failure to persist in imagining the ideal realized. Imagine only such
states that are of value or promise well.

To attempt to change circumstances before you change your imaginal activity, is to
struggle against the very nature of things. There can be no outer change until there is
first an imaginal change. Everything you do, unaccompanied by an imaginal change,
is but futile readjustment of surfaces. Imagining the wish fulfilled brings about a
union with that state, and during that union you behave in keeping with your imaginal
change. This shows you that an imaginal change will result in a change of behavior.
However, your ordinary imaginal alterations as you pass from one state to another are
not transformations because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the
reverse direction. But whenever one state grows so stable as to become your constant

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mood, your habitual attitude, then that habitual state defines your character and is a
true transformation.

How do you do it? Self-abandonment! That is the secret. You must abandon yourself
mentally to your wish fulfilled in your love for that state, and in so doing, live in the
new state and no more in the old state. You can't commit yourself to what you do not
love, so the secret of self-commission is faith — plus love. Faith is believing what is
unbelievable. Commit yourself to the feeling of the wish fulfilled, in faith that this act
of self-commission will become a reality. And it must become a reality because
imagining creates reality.

Imagination is both conservative and transformative. It is conservative when it builds
its world from images supplied by memory and the evidence of the senses. It is
creatively transformative when it imagines things as they ought to be, building its
world out of the generous dreams of fancy. In the procession of images, the ones that
take precedence — naturally — are those of the senses. Nevertheless, a present sense
impression is only an image. It does not differ in nature from a memory image or the
image of a wish. What makes a present sense impression so objectively real is the
individual's imagination functioning in it and thinking from it; whereas, in a memory
image or a wish, the individual's imagination is not functioning in it and thinking
from it, but is functioning out of it and thinking of it.

If you would enter into the image in your imagination, then would you know what it
is to be creatively transformative: then would you realize your wish; and then you
would be happy. Every image can be embodied. But unless you, yourself, enter the
image and think from it, it is incapable of birth. Therefore, it is the height of folly to
expect the wish to be realized by the mere passage of time. That which requires
imaginative occupancy to produce its effect, obviously cannot be effected without
such occupancy. You cannot be in one image and not suffer the consequences of not
being in another.

Imagination is spiritual sensation. Enter the image of the wish fulfilled, then give it
sensory vividness and tones of reality by mentally acting as you would act were it a
physical fact. Now, this is what I mean by spiritual sensation. Imagine that you are
holding a rose in your hand. Smell it. Do you detect the odor of roses? Well, if the
rose is not there, why is its fragrance in the air? Through spiritual sensation — that
is — through imaginal sight, sound, scent, taste and touch, you can give to the image
sensory vividness. If you do this, all things will conspire to aid your harvesting and
upon reflection you will see how subtle were the threads that led to your goal. You
could never have devised the means which your imaginal activity employed to fulfill
itself.

If you long to escape from your present sense fixation, to transform your present life

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into a dream of what might well be, you need but imagine that you are already what
you want to be and to feel the way you would expect to feel under such
circumstances. Like the make-believe of a child who is remaking the world after its
own heart, create your world out of pure dreams of fancy. Mentally enter into your
dream; mentally do what you would actually do, were it physically true. You will
discover that dreams are realized not by the rich, but by the imaginative. Nothing
stands between you and the fulfillment of your dreams but facts — and facts are the
creations of imagining. If you change your imagining, you will change the facts.

Man and his past are one continuous structure. This structure contains all of the facts
which have been conserved and still operate below the threshold of his surface mind.
For him it is merely history. For him it seems unalterable — a dead and firmly fixed
past. But for itself, it is living — it is part of the living age. He cannot leave behind
him the mistakes of the past, for nothing disappears. Everything that has been is still
in existence. The past still exists, and it gives — and still gives — its results. Man must
go back in memory, seek for and destroy the causes of evil, however far back they lie.
This going into the past and replaying a scene of the past in imagination as it ought to
have been played the first time, I call revision — and revision results in repeal.

Changing your life means changing the past. The causes of any present evil are the
unrevised scenes of the past. The past and the present form the whole structure of
man; they are carrying all of its contents with it. Any alteration of content will result
in an alteration in the present and future.

Live nobly — so that mind can store a past well worthy of recall. Should you fail to do
so, remember, the first act of correction or cure is always — "revise." If the past is
recreated into the present, so will the revised past be recreated into the present, or else
the claim . . . though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ... is a
lie. And it is no lie.

The purpose of the story-to-story Commentary that follows is to link up as briefly as
possible the distinct but never disconnected themes of the fourteen chapters into
which I have divided the first part of this book. It will serve, I hope, as a thread of
coherent thought that binds the whole into proof of its claim! Imagining Creates
Reality.

To make such a claim is easily done. To prove it in the experience of others is far
sterner. To stir you to use the "Law" constructively in your own life — that is the aim
of this book.

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CHAPTER 2

"DWELL THEREIN''

"My God, 1 heard this day, that none doth build a stately habitation, but he that
means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, or can be, than is
Man? to whose creation all things are in decay. " — George Herbert

I wish it were true of man's noble dreams, but unfortunately — perpetual construction,
deferred occupancy — is the common fault of man. Why "build a stately habitation,"
unless you intend to "dwell therein?" Why build a dream house and not "dwell
therein?"

This is the secret of those who lie in bed awake while they dream things true. They
know how to live in their dream until, in fact, they do just that. Man, through the
medium of a controlled, waking dream, can predetermine his future. That imaginal
activity, of living in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, leads man across a bridge of
incident to the fulfillment of the dream. If we live in the dream — thinking from it, and
not of it — then the creative power of imagining will answer our adventurous fancy,
and the wish fulfilled will break in upon us and take us unawares.

Man is all imagination; therefore, man must be where he is in imagination, for his
imagination is himself. To realize that imagination is not something tied to the senses
or enclosed within the spatial boundary of the body is most important. Although man
moves about in space by movement of his physical body, he need not be so restricted.
He can move by a change in what he is aware of. However real the scene on which
sight rests, man can gaze on one never before witnessed. He can always remove the
mountain if it upsets his concept of what life ought to be. This ability to mentally
move from things as they are to things as they ought to be, is one of the most
important discoveries that man can make. It reveals man as a center of imagining with
powers of intervention which enable him to alter the course of observed events,
moving from success to success through a series of mental transformations of nature,
of others, and himself.

For many years a doctor and his wife "dreamed" about their "stately habitation," but
not until they imaginatively lived in it, did they manifest it. Here is their story:

"Some fifteen years ago, Mrs. M. and I purchased a lot on which we built a two-story
building housing our office and living area. We left ample space on the lot for an
apartment building — if and when our finances would permit. All those years we were
busy paying off our mortgage, and at the end of that time had no money for the
additional building we still desired so much. It was true that we had an ample savings
account which meant security for our business, but to use any part of it for a new

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building would be to jeopardize that security.

"But now your teaching awakened a new concept, boldly telling us we could have
what we most desired through the controlled use of our imagination and that realizing
a desire was made more convincing 'without money.' We decided to put it to a test to
forget about 'money' and concentrate our attention on the thing we desired most in
this world — the new apartment building.

"With this principle in mind, we mentally constructed the new building as we wanted
it, actually drawing physical plans so we could better formulate our mental picture of
the completed structure. Never forgetting to think from the end (in our case, the
completed, occupied building,) we took many imaginative trips through our
apartment house, renting the units to imaginary tenants, examining in detail every
room and enjoying the feeling of pride as friends offered congratulations on the
unique planning. We brought into our imaginal scene one friend in particular (I shall
call her Mrs. X) a lady we had not seen for some time as she had 'given us up'
socially, believing us a bit peculiar in our new way of thinking. In our imaginal scene
we took her through the building and asked how she liked it. Hearing her voice
distinctly, we had her reply, 'Doctor, I think it is beautiful.'

"One day while talking together of our building, my wife mentioned a contractor who
had constructed several apartment houses in our neighborhood. We knew of him only
by the name that appeared on signs adjacent to buildings under construction. But
realizing that if we were living in the end, we would not be looking for a contractor,
we promptly forgot this angle. Continuing these periods of daily imagining for several
weeks, we both felt we were now 'fused' with our desire and had successfully been
living in the end.

"One day a stranger entered our office and identified himself as the contractor whose
name my wife had mentioned weeks before. In an apologetic manner, he said, 'I don't
know why I stopped here. I normally don't go to see people, but rather, people come
to see me.' He explained that he passed our office often and had wondered why there
wasn't an apartment building on the comer lot. We assured him we would like very
much to have such a building there but that we had no money to put into the project,
not even the few hundred dollars it would take for plans.

"Our negative response did not faze him and seemingly compelled, he began to figure
and devise ways and means to carry out the job, unasked and unencouraged by us.
Forgetting the incident, we were quite startled when a few days later this man called,
informing us that plans were completed and that the proposed building would cost us
thirty thousand dollars! We thanked him politely and did absolutely nothing. We
knew we had been 'living imaginatively in the end' of a completed building and that
Imagination would assemble that building perfectly without any 'outside' assistance

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from us. So, we were not surprised when the contractor called again the next day to
say he had found a set of blueprints in his files that fitted our needs perfectly with few
alterations. This, we were informed, would save us the architect's fee for new plans.
We thanked him again and still did nothing.

"Logical thinkers would insist that such negative response from prospective
customers would completely end the matter. Instead, two days later the contractor
again called with the news that he had located a finance company willing to cover the
necessary loan with the exception of a few thousand dollars. It sounds incredible, but
we still did nothing. For — remember — to us this building was completed and rented,
and in our imagination we had not put one penny into its construction.

"The balance of this tale reads like a sequel to 'Alice In Wonderland,' for the
contractor came to our office the next day and said, as though presenting us with a
gift, 'You people are going to have that new building anyway. I've decided to finance
the balance of the loan myself. If this is agreeable, I'll have my lawyer draw up the
papers, and you can pay me back out of net profits from rentals.'

"This time we did do something! We signed the papers, and construction began
immediately. Most of the apartment units were rented before final completion, and all
but one occupied the day of completion. We were so thrilled by the seemingly
miraculous events of the past few months that for a while we didn't understand this
seeming 'flaw' in our imaginal picture. But knowing what we had already
accomplished through the power of imagining, we immediately conceived another
imaginal scene and in it, this time, instead of showing the party through the unit and
hearing the words 'we'll take it,' we ourselves in imagination visited tenants who had
already moved in that apartment. We allowed them to show us through the rooms and
heard their pleased and satisfied comments. Three days later that apartment was
rented.

"Our original imaginary drama had objectified itself in every detail save one, and that
one became a reality when one month later our friend, Mrs. X, surprised us with a
long overdue visit, expressing her desire to see our new building. Gladly we took her
through, and at the end of the tour heard her speak the line we had heard in our
imagination so many weeks before, as with emphasis on each word, she said, 'Doctor,
I think it is beautiful.'

"Our dream of fifteen years was realized. And we know, now, that it could have been
realized any time within those fifteen years if we had known the secret of imagining
and how to 'live in the end' of desire. But now it was realized — our one big desire was
objectified. And we did not put one penny of our own money into it." — Dr. M.

Through the medium of a dream — a controlled, waking dream — the Doctor and his

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wife created reality. They learned how to live in their dream house as, in fact, now
they do. Although help seemingly came from without, the course of events was
ultimately determined by the imaginal activity of the Doctor and his wife. The
participants were drawn into their imaginal drama because it was dramatically
necessary that they should be. Their imaginal structure demanded it.

"All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle."

The following story illustrates the way in which a lady prepared her "stately
habitation" by imaginatively sleeping in it — or "dwelling therein."

"A few months ago my husband decided to place our home on the market. The main
object for the move which we had discussed many times was to find a home large
enough for the two of us, my mother and my aunt, in addition to ten cats, three dogs
and one parakeet. Believe it or not, the contemplated move was my husband's idea as
he loved my mother and aunt and said I was at their house most of the time anyway,
so 'why not live together and pay one tax bill?' I liked the idea tremendously, but I
knew that this new home would have to be something very special in size, location
and arrangement as I insisted on privacy for all concerned.

"So at the moment I was undecided whether to sell our present home or not, but I
didn't argue as I knew quite well from past experience with imagining that our house
would never sell until I stopped 'sleeping' in it. Two months and four or five real
estate brokers later, my husband had 'given up' on the sale of our house and so had the
brokers. At this point I had convinced myself I now wanted the change, so for four
nights in my imagination I went to sleep in the kind of home I would like to own. On
the fifth day, my husband had an appointment at a friend's home and while there, met
a stranger who 'just happened' to be looking for a house in the hills. He was, of
course, brought swiftly back to see our house which he walked through once and said,
'I'll buy it.' This didn't make us very popular with the brokers, but that was all right
with me as I was happy to keep the broker's commission in the family! We moved
within ten days and stayed with my mother while looking for our new home.

"We listed our requirements with every agent on the Sunset Strip only (because I
wouldn't move out of the area) and each one of them without exception informed us
we were both mad. It was entirely impossible, they said, to find an older home of
English style with two separate living rooms, separate apartments, a library, and built
on a flat knoll with enough ground space to fence for large dogs — and located in one
particular area. When we told them the price we would pay for this house they just
looked sad.

"I said that wasn't all we wanted. We wanted wood paneling all through the house, a

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huge fireplace, a magnificent view and seclusion — no close neighbors, please. At this
point the lady agent would giggle and remind me that there was no such house, but if
there were they would realize five times what we were willing to pay. But I knew
there was such a house — because my imagination had been sleeping in it, and if I am
my imagination, then I had been sleeping in it.

"By the second week we had exhausted five real estate offices, and the gentleman in
the sixth office was looking a little wild when one of his partners who had not spoken
until then said, 'Why don't you show them the place up Kings Road?' A third partner
in the office laughed sourly and said, 'That property isn't even listed. And besides —
the old lady would throw you off the property. She's got two acres up there and you
know she wouldn't split.'

"Well, I didn't know what she wouldn't split, but my interest had been aroused by the
street name for I liked that particular area best of all. So I asked why not just take a
look anyway, for laughs. As we drove up the street and turned off onto a private road,
we approached a large two-story house built of redwood and brick, English in
appearance, surrounded by tall trees and sitting alone and aloof on its own knoll,
viewing the city below from all of its many windows. I felt a peculiar excitement as
we walked to the front door and were greeted by a lovely woman who graciously
asked us in.

"I do not think I breathed for the next minute or two, for I had walked into the most
exquisite room I had ever seen. The solid redwood walls and the brick of a great
fireplace rose to a height of twenty-eight feet terminating in an arched ceiling joined
together by huge redwood beams. The room was straight out of Dickens, and I could
almost hear Christmas carolers singing on the balcony of the upstairs dining room
which looked out over the living room. A great cathedral window gave a view of sky,
mountains and city far below, and the beautiful old redwood walls glowed in the
sunlight. We were shown through a spacious apartment on the lower floor with
connecting library, separate entrance and separate patio. Two staircases led upward to
a long hall opening into two separated bedrooms and baths, and at the end of the hall
was — yes — a second living room, opening out onto a second patio screened by trees
and redwood fencing.

"Built on two acres of beautifully landscaped grounds, I began to understand what the
agent had meant by saying, 'she wouldn't split' for on one acre stood a large
swimming pool and pool house completely separated from the main house but
undoubtedly belonging to it. It did, indeed, seem to be an impossible situation as we
did not want two acres of highly taxable property plus a swimming pool a block away
from the house.

"Before we left, I walked through that magnificent living room, once more going up

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the stairs to the dining room balcony. I turned, and looking down saw my husband
standing by the fireplace, pipe in hand, with an expression of perfect satisfaction on
his face. I placed my hands on the balcony railing and watched him for a moment.

"When we were back in the real estate office, the three agents were ready to close for
the day, but my husband detained them saying, 'Let's make her an offer anyway.
Maybe she will split the property. What can we lose?' One agent left the office
without a word. Another said, 'The idea is ridiculous.' The agent we had originally
talked to said, 'Forget it. It's a pipe dream.' My husband is not easily annoyed but
when he is, there is no more stubborn creature on earth. He was now annoyed. He sat
down, slammed his hand on a desk and roared, 'It's your business to submit offers,
isn't it?' They agreed that this was so and finally promised to submit our offer on the
property.

"We left, and that night — in my imagination — I stood on that dining room balcony
and looked down at my husband standing by the fireplace. He looked up at me and
said, 'Well, honey, how do you like our new home?' I said, 'I love it.' I continued to
see that beautiful room and my husband in it and 'felt' the balcony railing gripped in
my hands until I fell asleep.

"The next day as we were having dinner in my mother's house, the telephone rang and
the agent, in an unbelieving voice, informed me that we had just purchased a house.
The owner had split the property right down the middle, giving us the house and the
acre it stood on for the price we offered." . . . J.R.B.

"... dreamers often lie in bed awake, while they do dream things true."

One must adopt either the way of imagination or the way of sense. No compromise or
neutrality is possible. "He who is not for me is against me." When man finally
identifies himself with his Imagination rather than his senses, he has at long last
discovered the core of reality.

I have often been warned by self-styled "realists" that man will never realize his
dream by simply imagining that it is already here. Yet, man can realize his dream by
simply imagining that it is already here. That is exactly what this collection of stories
proves; if only men were prepared to live imaginatively in the feeling of the wish
fulfilled, advancing confidently in their controlled waking-dream, then the power of
imagining would answer their adventurous fancy and the wish fulfilled would break
in upon them and take them unawares.

Nothing is more continuously wonderful than the things that happen every day to the
man with imagination sufficiently awake to realize their wonder. Observe your
imaginal activities. Imagine better than the best you know, and create a better world

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for yourself and others. Live as though the wish had come, even though it is yet to
come, and you will shorten the period of waiting. The world is imaginal, not
mechanistic. Imaginal acts — not blind fate — determine the course of history.

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CHAPTER 3

TURN THE WHEEL BACKWARD

"Oh, let your strong imagination turn the great wheel backward, until Troy unburn. "

"All life is, throughout the ages nothing but the continuing solution of a continuous
synthetic problem. " — H. G. Wells

The perfectly stable or static state is always unattainable. The end attained objectively
always realizes more than the end the individual originally had in view. This, in turn,
creates a new situation of inner conflict, needing novel solutions to force man along
the path of creative evolution. "His touch is infinite and lends a yonder to all ends."
Today's events are bound to disturb yesterday's established order. The creatively
active imagination invariably unsettles a pre-existing peace of mind.

The question may arise as to how, by representing others to ourselves as better than
they really were, or mentally rewriting a letter to make it conform to our wish, or by
revising the scene of an accident, the interview with the employer, and so on — could
change what seems to be the unalterable facts of the past, but remember my claims
for imagining: Imagining Creates Reality. What it makes, it can unmake. It is not only
conservative, building a life from images supplied by memory — it is also creatively
transformative, altering a theme already in being.

The parable of the unjust steward gives the answer to this question. We can alter our
world by means of a certain "illegal" imaginal practice, by means of a mental
falsification of the facts — that is, by means of a certain intentional imaginal alteration
of that which we have experienced. All this is done in one's own imagination. This is
a form of falsehood which not only is not condemned, but is actually approved in the
gospel teaching. By means of such a falsehood, a man destroys the causes of evil and
acquires friends and on the strength of this revision proves, judging by the high praise
the unjust steward received from his master, that he is deserving of confidence.

Because imagining creates reality, we can carry revision to the extreme and revise a
scene that would be otherwise unforgivable. We learn to distinguish between man —
who is all imagination — and those states into which he may enter. An unjust steward,
looking at another's distress, will represent the other to himself as he ought to be seen.
Were he, himself, in need — he would enter his dream in his imagination and imagine
what he would see and how things would seem and how people would act — 'after
these things should be.' Then, in this state he would fall asleep, feeling the way he
would expect to feel, under such circumstances.

Would that all the Lord's people were unjust stewards — mentally falsifying the facts
of life to deliver individuals forevermore. For the imaginal change goes forward, until

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at length the altered pattern is realized on the heights of attainment. Our future is our
imaginal activity in its creative march. Imagine better than the best you know.

To revise the past is to re-construct it with new content. Man should daily relive the
day as he wished he had lived it, revising the scenes to make them conform to his
ideals. For instance, suppose today's mail brought disappointing news. Revise the
letter. Mentally rewrite it and make it conform to the news you wish you had
received. Then, in imagination, read the revised letter over and over again and this
will arouse the feeling of naturalness; and imaginal acts become facts as soon as we
feel natural in the act. This is the essence of revision and revision results in repeal.
This is exactly what F.B. did:

"Late in July I wrote to a real estate agent of my desire to sell a piece of land which
had been a financial burden to me. His negative reply listed all the reasons why sales
were at a standstill in that area, and he forecast a bleak period of waiting until after
the first of the year.

"I received his letter on a Tuesday, and — in my imagination — I rewrote it with words
indicating that the agent was eager to take my listing. I read this revised letter over
and over, and I extended my imaginal drama using your theme of the Four Mighty
Ones of our Imagination — from your book 'Seedtime and Harvest.' — the Producer, the
Author, the Director, and the Actor.

"In my imaginal scene as Producer, I suggested the theme, 'The lot is sold for a profit.
As the Author, I wrote this simple scene which, to me, implied fulfillment: Standing
in the real estate office, I extended my hand to the agent and said, 'Thank you, sir,'
and he replied, 'It was a pleasure doing business with you.' As Director, I rehearsed
myself as Actor until that scene was vividly real and I felt the relief which would be
mine if the burden were really lifted.

"Three days later, the agent I had originally written phoned me saying he had a
deposit for my lot at the price I had specified. I signed the papers in his office the next
day, extended my hand and said, 'Thank you, sir.' The agent replied, 'It was a pleasure
doing business with you.'

"Five days after I had constructed and enacted an imaginal scene, it became a physical
reality and was played word for word just as I had heard it in my imagination. The
feeling of relief and joy came — not so much from selling the property — but from the
incontrovertible proof that my imagined drama worked." . . . F.B.

If the thing accomplished were all, how futile! But F.B. discovered a power within
himself that can consciously create circumstances.

By mentally falsifying the facts of life, man moves from passive reaction to active

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creation; this breaks the wheel of recurrence and builds a cumulatively enlarging
future. If man does not always create in the full sense of the word, it is because he is
not faithful to his vision, or else he thinks of what he wants rather than from his wish
fulfilled.

Man is such an extraordinary synthesis, partly tied by his senses, and partly free to
dream that his internal conflicts are perennial. The state of conflict in the individual is
expressed in society.

Life is a romantic adventure. To live creatively, imagining novel solutions to ever
more complex problems is far nobler than to restrain or kill out desire. All that is
desired can be imagined into existence.

"Wouldst thou be in a Dream, and yet not sleep?" Try to revise your day every night
before falling asleep. Try to visualize clearly and enter into the revised scene which
would be the imaginal solution of your problem. The revised imaginal structure may
have a great influence on others, but that is not your concern. The "other" influenced
in the following story is profoundly grateful for that influence. L. S. E. writes:

"Last August, while on a 'blind date' I met the man I wanted to marry. This happens
sometimes, and it happened to me. He was everything I had ever thought of as
desirable in a husband. Two days after this enchanted evening, it was necessary for
me to change my place of residence because of my work, and that same week the
mutual friend who had introduced me to this man, moved away from the city. I
realized that the man I had met probably did not know of my new address, and
frankly, I was not sure he knew my name.

"After your last lecture, I spoke to you of this situation. Although I had plenty of
other 'dates' I could not forget this one man. Your lecture was based on revising out-
day; and after speaking to you, I determined to revise my day, every day. Before
going to sleep that night, I felt I was in a different bed, in my own home, as a married
woman — and not as a single working girl, sharing an apartment with three other
girls. I twisted an imaginary wedding band on my imaginary left hand, saying over
and over to myself, 'This is wonderful! I really am Mrs. J.E.!' and I fell asleep in what
was — a moment before — a waking dream.

"I repeated this imaginary scene for one month, night after night. The first week in
October he 'found' me. On our second date, I knew my dreams were rightly placed.
Your teaching tells us to live in the end of our desire until that desire becomes 'fact' so
although I did not know how he felt toward me, I continued, night after night, living
in the feeling of my dream realized.

"The results? In November he proposed. In January we announced our engagement;

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and the following May we were married. The loveliest part of it all, however, is that I
am happier than I ever dreamed possible; and I know in my heart, he is too." . . . Mrs.
J.E.

By using her imagination radically, instead of conservatively, — by building her world
out of pure dreams of fancy — rather than using images supplied by memory, she
brought about the fulfillment of her dream. Common sense would have used images
supplied by her memory, and thereby perpetuated the fact of lack in her life.
Imagination created what she desired out of a dream of fancy. Everyone must live
wholly on the level of imagination, and it must be consciously and deliberately
undertaken.

". . . Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that
apprehend more than cool reason over comprehends."

If our time of revision be well spent, we need not worry about results — our fondest
hopes will be realized.

"Art thou real, Earth? Am I? In whose dream do we exist? ..."

There is no inevitable permanence in anything. Both past and present continue to
exist only because they are sustained by "Imagining" on some level or other; and a
radical transformation of life is always possible by man revising the undesirable part
of it.

In his letter, Mr. R.S. questions this subject of influence:

"During your current series of lectures, trouble developed with collections on one of
my Trust Deeds. The security, a house and lot, was neglected and run down. The
owners were apparently spending their money in bars while their two little girls, aged
nine and eleven, were noticeably uncared for. However, forgetting appearances, I
began to revise the situation. In my imagination I drove my wife past the property and
said to her, 'Isn't the yard beautiful? It's so neat and well cared for. Those people
really show their love for their home. This is one Trust Deed we will never have to
worry about.' I would 'see' the house and lot as I wanted to see it — a place so lovely,
it gave me a warm glow of pleasure. Every time the thought of this property came to
me, I repeated my imaginal scene.

"After I had been practicing this revision for some time, the woman who lived in the
house had an automobile accident; while she was in the hospital her husband
disappeared. The children were cared for by neighbors; and I was tempted to visit the
mother in the hospital to reassure her of assistance, if necessary. But how could I,
when my imaginary scene implied that she and her family were happy, successful and
obviously contented? So I did nothing but my daily revision. A short while after

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leaving the hospital, the woman and her two daughters disappeared also. Payments
were sent in on the property and a few months later she reappeared with a wedding
certificate and a new husband. At this writing, all payments are right up to date. The
two little girls are obviously happy and well cared for, and a room has been added to
the property by the owners giving our Trust Deed additional security.

"It was mighty nice to solve my problem without threats, unkind words, eviction, or
worry about the little girls; but was there something in my imagining that sent that
woman to the hospital?" . . . R.S.

Any imaginal activity acquiring intensity through our concentrated attention to clarity
of the end desired tends to overflow into regions beyond where we are; but we must
leave it to take care of such imaginal activity itself. It is marvelously resourceful in
adapting and adjusting means to realize itself. Once we think in terms of influence
rather than of clarity of the end desired, the effort of imagination becomes an effort of
will and the great art of imagining is perverted into tyranny.

The buried past usually lies deeper than our surface mind can plumb. But fortunately,
for this lady, she remembered and proved that the "made" past can also be "unmade"
through revision.

"For thirty-nine years I had suffered from a weak back. The pain would increase and
decrease but would never leave completely. The condition had progressed to the point
where I used medical treatment almost constantly; the doctor would put the hip right
for the moment but the pain simply would not go away. One night I heard you speak
of revision and wondered to myself if a condition of almost forty years could be
revised. I had remembered that at the age of three or four years I had fallen backward
from a very high swing and had been quite ill at that time because of a serious hip
injury. From that time on I had never been completely free from pain and had paid
many a dollar to alleviate the condition, to no avail.

"This year during the month of August the pain had become more intense and one
night I decided to test myself and attempt to revise that 'ancient' accident which had
been the cause of so much distress in pain and costly medical fees most of my adult
life. Many nights passed before I could 'feel' myself back to the age of childhood
play. But I succeeded. One night I actually 'felt' myself on that swing feeling the rush
of wind as the swing rose higher and higher. As the swing slowed down, I jumped
forward landing solidly and easily on my feet. In the imaginal action I ran to my
mother and insisted that she come watch what I could do. I did it again, jumping
down from the swing and landing safely on my two feet. I repeated this imaginal act
over and over until I fell asleep in the doing of it.

"Within two days the pain in my back and hip began to recede and within two months

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pain no longer existed for me. A condition that had plagued me for more than thirty-
nine years, that had cost a small fortune in attempted cure — was no more. . ." L.H.

It is to the pruning shears of revision that we owe our prime fruit. Man and his past
are one continuous structure. This structure contains all of the past which has been
conserved and still operates below the threshold of his senses to influence the present
and the future of his life. The whole is carrying all of its contents with it; any
alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present and the future. The first
act of correction or cure is always "Revise." If the past can be recreated into the
present, so can the revised past. And thus the Revised Past appears within the very
heart of her present life; not Fate but a revised past brought her good fortune.

Make results and accomplishment the crucial test of true imagination and your
confidence in the power of imagination to create reality will grow gradually from
your experiments with revision confronted by experience. Only by this process of
experiment can you realize the potential power of your awakened and controlled
imagination.

"How much do you owe my master?" He said, "A hundred measures of oil." And he
said to him, "Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty!" This parable of the
unjust steward urges us to mentally falsify the facts of life, to alter a theme already in
being. By means of such imaginative falsehoods a man "acquires friends." As each
day falls, mentally revise the facts of life and make them conform to events well
worthy of recall; tomorrow will take up the altered pattern and go forward until at
length it is realized on the heights of attainment.

The reader will find it worthwhile to follow these clues — imaginal construction of
scenes implying the wish fulfilled, and imaginative participation in these scenes until
tones of reality are reached. We are dealing with the secret of imagining, in which
man is seen awakening into a world completely subject to his imaginative power.

Man can understand recurrence of events well enough (the building of a world from
images supplied by memory) — things remaining as they are. This gives him a sense
of security in the stability of things. However, the presence within him of a power
which awakens and becomes what it wills, radically changing its form, its
environment and the circumstances of life, inspires in him a feeling of insecurity, a
dreadful fear of the future. Now, "it is high time to awake out of sleep" and put an end
to all the unlovely creations of sleeping Man. Revise each day. "Let your strong
imagination turn the great wheel backward until Troy unburn."

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CHAPTER 4

THERE IS NO FICTION

"The distinction between what is real and what is imaginary is not one that can be
finally maintained ... all existing things are, in an intelligible sense, imaginary. "

— John S. MacKenzie

There is no fiction. If an imaginal activity can produce a physical effect, our physical
world must be essentially imaginal. To prove this would require merely that we
observe our imaginal activities and watch to see whether or not they produce
corresponding external effects. If they do, then we must conclude that there is no
fiction. Today's imaginal drama — fiction — becomes tomorrow's fact.

If we had this wider view of causation — that causation is mental — not physical — that
our mental states are causative of physical effects, then we would realize our
responsibility as a creator and imagine only the best imaginable.

Fable enacted as a sort of stage-play in the mind is what causes the physical facts of
life. Man believes that reality resides in the solid objects he sees around him, that it is
in this world that the drama of life originates, that events spring suddenly into
existence, created moment by moment out of antecedent physical facts. But causation
does not lie in the external world o£ facts. The drama of life originates in the
imagination of man. The real act of becoming takes place within man's imagination
and not without.

The following stories could define "causation" as the assemblage of mental states,
which occurring, creates that which the assemblage implies.

The foreword from Walter Lord's "A Night To Remember" illustrates my claim,
"Imagining Creates Reality."

"In 1898 a struggling author, named Morgan Robertson, concocted a novel about a
fabulous Atlantic liner, far larger than any that had ever been built. Robertson loaded
his ship with rich and complacent people and then wrecked it one cold April night on
an iceberg. This somehow showed the futility of everything, and in fact, the book was
called 'FUTILITY' when it appeared that year, published by the firm of M. F.
Mansfield.

"Fourteen years later a British shipping company, named the White Star Line, built a
steamer remarkably like the one in Robertson's novel. The new liner was 66,000 tons
displacement; Robertson's was 70,000 tons.

"The real ship was 882.5 feet long; the fictional one was 800 feet. Both could carry

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about 3,000 people, and both had enough lifeboats for only a fraction of this number.
But, then this didn't seem to matter because both were labelled 'unshakable!'

"On April 19, 1912, the real ship left Southampton on her maiden voyage to New
York. Her cargo included a priceless copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and a
list of passengers collectively worth $250 million dollars. On her way over she, too,
struck an iceberg and went down on a cold April night.

"Robertson called his ship the Titan; the White Star Line called its ship the Titanic. "

Had Morgan Robertson known that Imagining Creates Reality, that today's fiction is
tomorrow's fact, would he have written the novel Futility? "In the moment of the
tragic catastrophe," writes Schopenhauer, "the conviction becomes more distinct to us
than ever that life is a bad dream from which we have to awake." And the bad dream
is caused by the imaginal activity of sleeping humanity.

Imaginal activities may be remote from their manifestation and unobserved events are
only appearance. Causation as seen in this tragedy is elsewhere in space-time. Far off
from the scene of action, invisible to all, was Robertson's imaginal activity, like a
scientist in a control-room directing his guided missile through Space-Time.

Who paints a picture, writes a play or book

Which others read while he's asleep in bed

O' the other side of the world — when they o'erlook

His page the sleeper might as well be dead;

What knows he of his distant unfelt life?

What knows he of the thoughts his thoughts are raising,

The life his life is giving, or the strife
Concerning him — some cavilling, some praising?

Yet which is most alive, he who's asleep
Or his quick spirit in some other place,

Or score of other places, that doth keep
Attention fixed and sleep from others chase?

Which is the "he" — the "he" that sleeps, or "he"

That his own "he" can neither feel nor see? . . .

— Samuel Butler

Imaginative writers communicate not their vision of the world but their attitudes
which result in their vision. Just a short while before Katherine Mansfield died, she
said to her friend Orage:

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"There are in life as many aspects as attitudes toward it; and aspects change with
attitudes. . . Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but
life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance
because we ourselves had undergone a change in attitude . . . Perception of a new
pattern is what I call a creative attitude towards life."

"Prophets," wrote Blake, "in the modern sense of the word, have never existed. Jonah
was no prophet in the modern sense, for his prophesy of Nineveh failed. Every honest
man is a prophet; he utters his opinion both of private & public matters. Thus: If you
go on So, the result is So. He never says, such a thing shall happen let you do what
you will. A Prophet is a Seer, not an Arbitrary Dictator." The function of the Prophet
is not to tell us what is inevitable, but to tell us what can be built up out of persistent
imaginal activities.

The future is determined by the imaginal activities of humanity, activities in their
creative march, activities which can be seen in "Your dreams and the visions of your
head as you lay in bed." "Would that all the Lord's people were prophets" in the true
sense of the word like this dancer who now, from the summit of his realized ideal,
sights yet higher peaks that are to be scaled. After you have read this story you will
understand why he is so confident that he can predetermine any materialistic future he
desires and why he is equally sure that others give reality to what were otherwise a
mere figment of his imagination, that there exists and can exist nothing outside
imagining on some level or other. Nothing continues in being save what imagining
supports. "... The mind can make Substance, and people planets of its own with
beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all
flesh ..."

"As my story begins at the age of nineteen I was a mildly successful dancing teacher
and continued in this static state for almost five years. At the end of this time I met a
young lady who talked me into attending your lectures. My thought, upon hearing you
say 'Imagining creates reality,' was that the entire idea was ridiculous. However, I
decided to accept your challenge and disprove your thesis. I bought your book 'Out of
This World' and read it many times. Still unconvinced I set myself a rather ambitious
goal. My present position was as an instructor with the Arthur Murray Dance Studio
and my goal was to own a franchise and be boss of an Arthur Murray studio myself!

"This seemed the most unlikely thing in the world as franchises were extremely
difficult to secure, but on top of this fact, I was completely without the necessary
funds to begin such an operation. Nevertheless. I assumed the feeling of my wish
fulfilled as night after night, in my imagination, I went to sleep managing my own
studio. Three weeks later a friend called me from Reno, Nevada. He had the Murray
Studio there and said it was too much for him to cope with alone. He offered me a
partnership and I was delighted; so delighted, in fact, that I hastened to Reno on

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borrowed money and promptly forgot all about you and your story of Imagination!

"My partner and I worked hard and were very successful, but after a year I was still
not satisfied, I wanted more. I began thinking of ways and means to get another
studio. All my efforts failed. One night as I retired, I was restless and decided to read.
As I looked through my collection of books I noticed your slender volume, 'Out of
This World.' I thought of the 'silly nonsense' I had gone through one year ago before
getting my own studio. GETTING MY OWN STUDIO! The words in my mind
electrified me! I reread the book that night and later, in my imagination, I heard my
superior praise the good job we had done in Reno and suggest we acquire a second
studio as he had a second location ready for us if we desired to expand. I re-enacted
this imaginal scene nightly without fail. Three weeks from the first night of my
imaginal drama, it materialized — almost word for word. My partner accepted the
new studio in Bakersfield and I had the Reno Studio alone. Now I was convinced of
the truth of your teaching and never again will I forget.

"Now I wanted to share this wonderful knowledge — of imaginal power with my
staff. I tried to tell them of the marvels they could accomplish, but I was unable to
reach many although one fantastic incident resulted from my efforts to tell this story.
A young teacher told me he believed my story but said it would have probably
happened anyway in time. He insisted the entire theory was nonsense but stated that if
I could tell him something of an incredible nature that would actually happen and
which he could witness — then he would believe. I accepted his challenge and
conceived a truly fantastic test.

"The Reno Studio is the most insignificant in the entire Murray system because of the
small population count in the city itself. There are over three hundred Murray Studios
in the country with much larger populations, therefore providing greater possibilities
to draw from. So, my test was this. I told the teacher that within the next three
months, at the time of a national dance convention, the little Reno Studio would be
the foremost topic of conversation at that convention. He calmly stated this was quite
impossible.

"That night when I retired, I felt myself standing before a tremendous audience. I was
speaking on 'Creative Imagining' and felt the nervousness of being before such a vast
audience; but I also felt the wonderful sensation of audience acceptance. I heard the
roar of applause and as I left the stage, I saw Mr. Murray, himself come forward and
shake my hand. I re-enacted this entire drama night after night. It began to take on the
'tones of reality' and I knew I had done it again!

"My imaginal drama materialized down to the last detail.

"My little Reno Studio was the 'talk' of the convention and I did appear on that stage

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just as I had done in my imagination. But even after this unbelievable but actual
happening, the young teacher who threw me the challenge remained unconvinced. He
said it had all happened too naturally! And he was sure it would have happened
anyway!

"I did not mind his attitude because his challenge had given me another opportunity to
prove, at least to myself, that Imagining does Create Reality. From that time on, I
continued with my ambition to own the 'largest Arthur Murray Dance Studio in the
world!' Night after night, in my imagination, I heard myself accepting a studio
franchise for a great city. Within three weeks Mr. Murray called me and offered a
studio in a city of one and a half million people! It is now my goal to make my studio
the greatest and biggest in the entire system. And, of course, 'I know it will be done
— through my Imagination'!" . . . E.O.L., Jr.

"Imagining," writes Douglas Fawcett, "may be hard to grasp, being 'quicksilver-like'
it vanishes into each of its metamorphoses and thereby displays its transformative
magic." We must look beyond the physical fact for the imagining which has caused it.
For one year E.O.L., Jr. lost himself in his metamorphosis but fortunately he
remembered "the silly nonsense" he had gone through before getting his own studio . .
. and re-read the book.

Imaginal acts on the human level need a certain interval of time to develop but
imaginal acts, whether committed to print or locked in the bosom of a hermit, will
realize themselves in time.

Test yourself, if only out of curiosity. You will discover the "Prophet" is your own
imagining and you will know "there is no fiction."

"We should never be certain that it was not some woman treading in the wine-press
who began that subtle change in men's mind ... or that the passion, because of which
so many countries were given to the sword, did not begin in the mind of some
shepherd boy, lighting up his eyes for a moment before it ran upon its way." —
William Butler Yeats

There is no fiction. Imagining fulfills itself in what our lives become. "And now I
have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe."
The Greeks were right: "The Gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!" But
they have fallen asleep and do not realize the might they wield by their imaginal
activities.

"Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass
Their pleasure in a long immortal dream."

E.B., an author, is fully aware that "today's fiction can become tomorrow's fact." In

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this letter, she writes:

"One Spring, I completed a novelette, sold it and forgot it. Not until many long
months later did I sit down and nervously compare some 'facts' in my fiction with
some 'facts' in my life! Please read a brief outline of my created story. Then compare
it with my personal experience.

"The heroine of my story took a vacation trip to Vermont. To the small city of Stowe,
Vermont, to be exact. When she reached her destination she was faced with such
unpleasant behavior on the part of her companion that she either had to continue her
lifetime pattern of allowing another's selfish demand dominate her or to break that
pattern and leave. She broke it and returned to New York. When she returned (and the
story continues) events took shape in a proposal of marriage which she happily
accepted.

"For my part of this tale ... as small events evolved ... I began to remember the
dictates of my own pen and in significant relationship. This is what happened to me! I
received an invitation from a friend offering me a vacation at her summer place in
Vermont. I accepted and was not startled, at first, when I learned her 'summer place'
was in the city of Stowe. When I arrived, I found my hostess in such a highly nervous
state I realized I was faced with either a wretched summer or the choice of 'walking
out' on her. Never before in my life had I been strong enough to ignore what I thought
were the claims of duty and friendship — but this time I did and without ceremony
returned to New York. A few days after I returned to my home, I, too, received a
proposal of marriage. But at this point fact and fiction parted. I refused the offer! I
know, Neville, there is no such thing as fiction." . . . E.B.

"Forgetful is green earth, the gods alone remember everlastingly ... by their great
memories the gods are known."

Ends run true to their imaginal origins — we reap the fruit of forgotten blossom-time.
In life the events do not come up always where we have strewn the seed; so that we
may not recognize our own harvest. Events are the emergence of a hidden imaginal
activity. Man is free to imagine whatever he desires. This is why, despite all fatalists
and misguided prophets of doom, all awakened men know that they are free. They
know that they are creating reality. Is there a scriptural passage to support this claim?
Yes:

"And it came to pass, as he interpreted to us, so it was."

W. B. Yeats must have discovered that "there is no fiction" for after describing some
of his experiences in the conscious use of imagination, he writes: "If all who have
described events like this have not dreamed, we should rewrite our histories for all

26

men, certainly all imaginative men, must be forever casting forth enchantments,
glamours, illusions; and all men, especially tranquil men, who have no powerful
egotistic life must be continually passing under their power. Our most elaborate
thoughts, elaborate purposes, precise emotions, are often as I think, not really ours,
but have on a sudden come up, as it were, out of hell or down out of heaven. . ."

"There is no fiction." Imagine better than the best you know.

27

CHAPTER 5

SUBTLE THREADS

. . all you behold; tho' it appears Without, it is Within; In your Imagination, of
which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow. " — Blake

Nothing appears or continues in being by a power of its own. Events happen because
comparatively stable imaginal activities created them, and they continue in being by
virtue of the support they receive from such imaginal activities. The part which
imagining the wish fulfilled plays in consciously creating circumstances is obvious in
this series of stories.

You will see how the telling of one story of the successful use of imagination can
serve as a spur and a challenge to others to "try" it and "see."

One night a gentleman rose in my audience. He said that he had no question to ask
but would like to tell me something. This was his story:

When he came out of the Armed Forces after World War II he got a job that gave him
take-home pay of $25.00 a week. After ten years he was making $600.00 a month. At
that time he bought my book "Awakened Imagination" and read the chapter "The
Pruning Shears of Revision." Through the daily practice of "Revision," as set forth
there, he was able to tell my audience two years later that his income was equal to
that of the President of the United States.

In my audience sat a man who, by his confession, was broke. He had read the same
book, but he suddenly realized he had done nothing with the use of his imagination to
solve his financial problem.

He decided he would try to imagine himself as the winner of the 5-10 pool at Caliente
Race Track. In his words: "In this pool, one attempts to pick winners in the fifth
through the tenth races. So this is what I did: In my imagination I stood, sorting my
tickets and feeling as I did so, that I had each of the six winners. I enacted this scene
over and over in my imagination, until I actually felt 'goose pimples.' Then I 'saw' the
cashier giving me a large sum of money which I placed beneath my imaginary shirt.
This was my entire imaginal drama; and for three weeks, night after night, I enacted
this scene and fell asleep in the action.

"After three weeks I traveled physically to the Caliente Race Track, and on that day
every detail of my imaginative play was actually realized. The only change in the
scene was that the cashier gave me a check for a total of $84,000.00 instead of
currency.". . . T.K.

28

After my lecture the night this story was told, a man in the audience asked me if I
thought it possible for him to duplicate T.K.'s experience. I told him he must decide
the circumstances of his imaginal scene himself but that whatever scene he chose, he
must create a drama he could make natural to himself and imagine the end intently
with all the feeling he could muster; he must not labor for the means to the end but
live imaginatively in the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

One month later he showed me a check for $16,000.00 which he had won in another
5-10 pool at the same Caliente Race Track the previous day.

This man had a sequel to his most interesting duplication of T.K.'s good fortune. His
first win took care of his immediate financial difficulties although he wanted more
money for future family security. Also, and more important to him, he wanted to
prove that this had not been an "accident." He reasoned that if his good luck could
happen a second time in succession, the so-called "law of percentages" would give
way to proof for him that his imaginal structures were actually producing this
miraculous "reality." And so he dared to put his imagination to a second test. He
continues:

"I wanted a sizeable bank account and this, to me, meant 'seeing' a large balance on
my bank statements. Therefore, in my imagination I enacted a scene which took me
into two banks. In each bank I would 'see' an appreciative smile meant for me from
the bank manager as I walked into his establishment and I would 'hear' the teller's
cordial greeting. I would ask to see my statement. In one bank I 'saw' a balance of
$10,000.00. In the other bank I 'saw' a balance of $15,000.00.

"My imaginal scene did not end there. Immediately after seeing my bank balances I
would turn my attention to my horse racing system which, through a progression of
ten steps, would bring my winnings to $1 1,533.00 with a starting capital of $200.00.

"I would divide the winnings into twelve piles on my desk. Counting the money in
my imaginary hands I would put $1,000.00 in each of eleven piles and the remaining
five-hundred thirty-three dollars in the last pile. My 'imaginative accounting' would
amount to $36,533.00 including my bank balances.

"I enacted this entire imaginative scene each morning, afternoon and night for less
than one month, and, on March second, I went to the Caliente track again. I made out
my tickets, but strangely enough and not knowing why I did so, I duplicated six more
tickets exactly like the six already made out but in the tenth selection I made a
'mistake' and copied two tickets twice. As the winners came in, I held two of them —
each paying $16,423.50. I also had six consolation tickets, each paying $656.80. The
combined total amounted to $36,788.00. My imaginary accounting one month before
had totaled $36,533.00. Two points of interest, most profound to me, were that by

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seeming accident I had marked two winning tickets identically and also, that at the
end of the ninth race (which was one of the major winners) the trainer attempted to
'scratch' the horse, but the Stewards denied the trainer's request." . . . A.J.F.

How subtle were the threads that led to his goal? Results must testify to our
imagining or we really are not imagining the end at all. A.J.F. faithfully imagined the
end, and all things conspired to aid his harvesting. His "mistake" in copying a
winning ticket twice, and the Steward's refusal to allow the trainer's request were
events created by the imaginal drama to move the plan of things forward to its goal.

"Chance," wrote Belfort Bax, "may be defined as that element in the reality change —
that is, in the flowing synthesis of events — which is irreducible to law or the causal
category."

To live wisely we must be aware of our imaginal activities or, at any rate, of the end
which they are tending. We must see to it that it is the end we desire. Wise imagining
identifies itself only with such activities that are of value or promise well. However
much man seems to be dealing with a material world, he is actually living in a world
of imagination. When he discovers that it is not the physical world of facts but
imaginal activities which shape his life, then the physical world will no longer be the
reality, and the world of imagination no longer the dream.

"Does the road wind uphill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend."

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CHAPTER 6

VISIONARY FANCY

"The Nature of Visionary Fancy, or Imagination, is very little known, & the External
nature & permanence of its ever Existent Images is consider'd as less permanent than
the things of Vegetative & Generative Nature; yet the Oak dies as well as the Lettuce,
but Its Eternal image & Individuality never dies, but renews by its seed; just so the
Imaginative Image returns by the seed of Contemplative Thought. " — Blake

The images of our imagination are the realities of which any physical manifestation is
only the shadow. If we are faithful to vision, the image will create for itself the only
physical manifestation of itself it has a right to make. We speak of the "reality" of a
thing when we mean its material substance. That is exactly what an imaginist means
by its "unreality" or shadow.

Imagining is spiritual sensation. Enter into the feeling of your wish fulfilled. Through
spiritual sensation — through your use of imaginal sight, sound, scent, taste and
touch — you will give to your image the sensory vividness necessary to produce that
image in your outer or shadow world.

Here is the story of one who was faithful to his vision. F.B. being a true imaginist,
remembered what he had heard in his imagination. Thus he writes:

"A friend who knows my passionate fondness for opera tried to get Kirsten Flagstad's
complete recording of Tristan and Isolde for me at Christmas. In over a dozen record
stores he was told the same thing: 'RCA Victor is not reissuing this recording and
there have been no copies available since June.l On December 27th, I determined to
prove your principle again by getting the album I desired so intensely. Eying down in
my living room, I mentally walked into a record shop I patronize and asked the one
salesman whose face and voice I could recall, 'Do you have Flagstad's complete
Isolde?' He replied, 'Yes, I have.' That ended the scene and I repeated it until it was
'real' to me.

"Fate that afternoon I went to that record shop to physically enact the scene. Not one
detail supplied by the senses had encouraged me to believe I could walk out o£ that
shop with those records. I had been told last September by the same salesman in the
same shop the same story my friend had received there before Christmas.
Approaching the salesman I had seen in imagination that morning, I said, 'Do you
have Flagstad's complete Isolde?' He replied, 'No, we haven't.' Without saying
anything audible to him, I said inwardly, 'That's not what I heard you say!'

"As I turned to leave the shop I noticed on a top shelf what I thought to be an
advertisement of this set of records and remarked to the salesman, 'If you don't have

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the merchandise you shouldn't advertise it.' 'That's right,' he replied, and as he reached
up to take it down discovered it to be a complete album, with all five records! The
scene wasn't played exactly as I had constructed it, but the result confirmed what my
imagined scene implied. How can I thank you?" . . . F.B.

After reading F.B.'s letter we must agree with Anthony Eden that "An
assumption, though false, if persisted in will harden into fact." F.B.'s fancy, fusing
with the sense-field of the record shop, enriched aspects of it and made them 'his' —
what he perceived.

Our future is our imagining in its creative march. F.B. used his imagination for a
conscious purpose representing life as he desired it to be and thereby affecting life
instead of merely reflecting it. So sure was he that his imaginal drama was the reality
— and the physical act but a shadow — that when the salesman said, "No, we
haven't" F.B. mentally said, "That's not what I heard you say!" He not only
remembered what he had heard, but he was still remembering it. Imagining the wish
fulfilled is the seeking that finds, the asking that receives, the knocking to which is
opened. He saw and heard what he desired to see and hear; and would not take "No,
we haven't" for an answer.

The imaginist dreams while awake. He is not the servant of his Vision, but the master
of the direction of his attention. Imaginative constancy controls perception of events
in space-time.

Unfortunately, most men are . . .

"Ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy...."

Mrs. G.R., too, had imaginatively heard what she wanted to physically hear and knew
the outer world must confirm it. This is her story:

"Some time ago we advertised our home for sale which was necessary for us to buy a
larger property on which we had placed a deposit. Several people would have bought
our home immediately but we were obliged to explain that we could not close any
deal until we learned whether or not our offer for the property we wanted had been
accepted. At this time, a broker called and literally begged us to allow him to show
our home to a client of his who was eager for this location and would be glad to pay
even more than we were asking. We explained our situation to the broker and to his
client; they both stated they did not mind waiting for our deal to be consummated.
The broker asked us to sign a paper which he said was not binding in any way but
would give him first chance at the sale if our other deal went through. We signed the
paper and later learned that in California Real Estate law nothing could have been

32

more binding. A few days later our deal for the new property fell through so we
notified this broker and his verbal response was, 'Well, just forget it.' Two weeks later
he filed suit against us for fifteen hundred dollars commission. Trial date was set and
we asked for a jury trial.

"Our attorney assured us he would do all he could, but that the law on this particular
point was so stringent that he could not see any possibility of our winning the case.
When time for the trial arrived my husband was in the hospital and could not appear
with me in our defense. I had no witnesses; but the broker brought three attorneys and
a number of witnesses into court against us. Our attorney now told me we had not the
slightest chance to win.

"I turned to my imagination, and this is what I did. Completely disregarding all that
had been said by attorneys, witnesses and the judge who seemed to favor the plaintiff,
I thought only of the words I wanted to hear. In my imagination, I listened intently
and heard the foreman of the jury say, 'We find the defendant not guilty.' I listened
until I knew it was true. I closed my mind's ear to everything said in that courtroom
and heard only those words, 'We find the defendant not guilty!' The jury deliberated
from noon recess until four-thirty that afternoon, and all during those hours I sat in
the courtroom and heard those words over and over in my imagination. When the
jurors returned the Judge asked the foreman to stand and give their verdict. The
foreman stood up and said, 'We find the defendant NOT guilty'." . . . Mrs. G.R.

"If there were dreams to sell
What would you buy?"

Would you not buy your wish fulfilled? Your dreams are without price and without
money. By locking up the jury in her imagination — hearing only what she wanted to
hear, she called the jury to unanimity on her behalf. Imagining being the reality of all
that exists, with it the lady achieved her wish fulfilled.

Hebbel's statement that "the poet creates from contemplation" is true of imaginists as
well. They know how to utilize their video-audio hallucinations to create reality.

Nothing is so fatal as conformity. We must not allow ourselves to be girt about by the
ringed fixity of fact. Change the image, and thereby change the fact. R.O. employed
the art of seeing and feeling to create her vision in imagination.

"A year ago I took my children to Europe leaving my furnished apartment in the care
of my maid. When we returned a few months later to the United States I found my
maid and all my furniture gone. The apartment superintendent stated that the maid
had had my furniture moved 'by my request.' There was nothing I could do at the
moment, so I took my children and moved into a hotel. I, of course, reported the

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incident to the police and, also, brought in private detectives on the case. Both
organizations investigated every moving company and every storage warehouse in
New York City, but to no avail. There seemed to be absolutely no trace of my
furniture, nor of my maid.

"Having exhausted all outside sources, I remembered your teaching and decided I
would try using my imagination in this matter. So, while seated in my hotel room I
closed by eyes and imagined myself in my own apartment sitting in my favorite chair
and surrounded by all of my personal furnishings. I looked across the living room at
the piano on which I kept pictures of my children. I would continue to stare at my
piano until the entire room became vividly real to me. I could see my children's
pictures and actually feel the upholstery of the chair in which, in my imagination, I
sat.

"The next day, as I came out of my bank, I turned to walk in the direction of my
vacant apartment instead of toward my hotel. When I reached the corner I discovered
my 'mistake' and was just about to turn back when my attention was drawn to a very
familiar pair of ankles. Yes, the ankles belonged to my maid. I walked up to her and
took hold of her arm. She was quite frightened, but I assured her all I wanted from her
was my furniture. I called a taxi and she took me to the place in which her friends had
stored my furnishings. In one day, my imagination had found what an entire big city
police force and private investigators could not find in weeks." . . . R.O.

This lady knew of the secret of imagining before she called in the police, but
imagining — in spite of its importance — was forgotten owing to attention being fixed
on facts. However, what reason failed to find by force, imagining found without
effort. Nothing merely goes on — including the sense of loss — without its imaginal
support. By imagining that she was seated in her own chair, in her own living room,
surrounded by all of her own furnishings, she withdrew the imaginal support she had
given to her sense of loss; and by this imaginal change she recovered her lost
furniture and re-established her home.

Your imagination is most creative when you imagine things as you desire them to be,
building a new experience out of a dream of fancy. To build such a dream of fancy in
her imagination, F.G. brought to play all of her senses — sight, sound, touch, smell —
even taste. This is her story:

"Since childhood I have dreamed of visiting far-away places. The West Indies,
particularly, fired my fancy, and I would revel in the feeling of actually being there.
Dreams are wonderfully inexpensive and as an adult I continued to dream my dreams,
for I had no money or time to make them 'come true.' Last year I was taken to the
hospital in need of surgery. I had heard your teaching and, while recuperating, had
decided to intensify my favorite daydream while I had time on my hands. I actually

34

wrote to the Alcoa Steamship Line asking for free travel folders and pored over them,
hour after hour, choosing the ship and the stateroom and the seven ports I desired
most to see. I would close my eyes and, in my imagination, would walk up the
gangplank of that ship and feel the movement of water as the great liner pushed its
way into free ocean. I heard the thud of waves breaking against the sides of the ship,
felt the steaming warmth of a tropical sun on my face and smelled and tasted salt in
the air as we all sailed through blue waters.

"For one solid week, confined to a hospital bed, I lived the free and happy experience
of actually being on that ship. Then, the day before my release from the hospital, I
tucked the colored folders away and forgot them. Two months later I received a
telegram from an advertising agency telling me I had won a contest. I remembered
having deposited a contest coupon some months before in a neighborhood
supermarket but had completely forgotten the act. I had won first prize and — wonder
of wonders — it entitled me to a Caribbean cruise sponsored by the Alcoa Steamship
Line. But the wonder didn't stop there. The very stateroom I had imaginatively lived
in and moved about in while confined to a hospital bed had been assigned to me. And
to make an unbelievable story even more unbelievable, I sailed on the one ship I had
chosen — which stopped in not one, but all of the seven ports I had desired to visit!" .
. . F.G.

"To travel is the privilege, not of the rich but of the imaginative."

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CHAPTER 7

MOODS

"This is an age in which the mood decides the fortunes of people rather than the
fortunes decide the mood. " — Sir Winston Churchill

Men regard their moods far too much as effects and not sufficiently as causes. Moods
are imaginal activities without which no creation is possible. We say that we are
happy because we have achieved our goal; we do not realize that the process works
equally well in the reverse direction — that we shall achieve our goal because we have
assumed the happy feeling of the wish fulfilled.

Moods are not only the result of the conditions of our life; they are also the causes of
those conditions. In "The Psychology of Emotions," Professor Ribot writes, "An idea
which is only an idea produces nothing and does nothing; it only acts if it is felt, if it
is accompanied by an effective state, if it awakens tendencies, that is to say, motor
elements."

The lady in the following story so successfully felt the feeling of her wish fulfilled,
she made her mood the character of the night — frozen in a delightful dream.

"Most of us read and love fairy stories, but we all know that stories of improbable
riches and good fortune are for the delight of the very young. But are they? I want to
tell you of something unbelievably wonderful that happened to me through the power
of my imagination — and I am not 'young' in years. We live in an age which believes
in neither fable nor magic, and yet everything I could possibly want in my wildest
day-dreams was given to me by the simple use of what you teach — that 'imagining
creates reality' and that 'feeling' is the secret of imagining.

"At the time this wonderful thing happened to me I was out of a job and had no
family to fall back upon for support. I needed just about everything. To find a decent
job I needed a car to look for it, and though I had a car it was so worn out it was ready
to fall apart. I was behind in my rent; I had no proper clothes to seek a job; and today
it's no fun for a woman of fifty-five to apply for a job of any kind. My bank account
was almost depleted and there was no friend to whom I could turn.

"But I had been attending your lectures for almost a year and my desperation forced
me to put my imagination to the test. Indeed, I had nothing to lose. It was natural for
me, I suppose, to begin by imagining myself having everything I needed. But I
needed so many things and in such short order that I found myself exhausted when I
finally got through the list, and by that time I was so nervous I could not sleep. One
lecture night I heard you tell of an artist who captured the 'feeling,' or 'word,' as you
called it, of 'isn't it wonderful!' in his personal experience. I began to apply this idea to

36

my case. Instead of thinking of and imagining every article I needed, I tried to capture
the 'feeling' that something wonderful was happening to me — not tomorrow, not next
week — but right now. I would say over and over to myself as I fell asleep, 'Isn't it
wonderful! Something marvelous is happening to me now!' And as I fell asleep I
would feel the way I would expect to feel under such circumstances.

"I repeated that imaginary action and feeling for two months, night after night, and
one day in early October I met a casual friend I hadn't seen for months who informed
me he was about to leave on a trip to New York. I had lived in New York many years
ago and we talked of the city a few moments and then parted. I completely forgot the
incident. One month later, to the day, this man called at my apartment and simply
handed me a Certified Check in my name for twenty-five hundred dollars. After I got
over the initial shock of seeing my name on a check for so much money, the story that
unfolded seemed to me like a dream. It concerned a friend I had not seen nor heard
from in more than twenty-five years. This friend of my past, I now learned, had
become extremely wealthy in those twenty-five years. Our mutual acquaintance who
had brought the check to me had met him quite by accident during the trip to New
York last month. During their conversation they spoke of me, and for reasons I was
not to know (for to this day I have not heard from him personally and have never
attempted to contact him) this old friend decided to share a portion of his great wealth
with me.

"For the next two years, from the office of his attorney, I received monthly checks so
generous in amount they not only covered every necessary requirement of daily
living, but left much over for all the lovely things of life: a car, clothes, a spacious
apartment — and best of all, no need to earn my daily bread.

"This past month I received a letter and some legal papers to be signed which provide
the continuation of this monthly income for the rest of my natural life!" . . . T.K.

"If the fool would persist in his folly
He would become wise."

Sir Winston calls on us to act on the assumption that we already possess that which
we sought, to "assume a virtue," if we have it not. Is this not the secret of "miracles"?
Thus the man with palsy was told to rise, to take up his bed and walk — to mentally
act as if he were healed; and when the actions of his imagination corresponded with
the actions which he would physically perform were he healed — he was healed.

"This is a story about which some may say, 'it would have happened anyway,' but
those who read it carefully will find room to wonder. It begins one year ago as I left
Los Angeles to visit my daughter in San Francisco. Instead of the happy-natured
individual she had always been, I found her in deep distress. Not knowing the cause

37

of her anguish and not wishing to ask, I waited until she told me that she was in great
financial trouble and must have three thousand dollars immediately. I am not a poor
woman but I didn't have much cash I could put my hands on that quickly. Knowing
my daughter, I knew she would not have accepted it anyway. I offered to borrow the
money for her, but she refused and instead asked me to help her in 'my way' . . . she
meant using my imagination, for I had often told her of your teaching and some of my
words must have struck home.

"I immediately agreed on this plan with the provision that she would help me help
her. We decided on an imaginal scene we could both practice that involved 'seeing'
money coming to her from everywhere. We felt money was flooding toward her from
every corner, until she was in the middle of a 'sea' of money, but we did this always
with the feeling of 'Joy' for anyone concerned and we had no thought of means, only
happiness for all.

"The idea seemed to catch fire with her, and I know she was responsible for what
happened a few days later. She was certainly transformed back to the happy,
confident mood that was natural to her, though there was no evidence of any real
money coming in at the time. I left to return home in the East.

"When I arrived home I called my mother (a lovely young lady of ninety-one) who
immediately asked me to come and see her. I wanted a day's rest but she couldn't
wait; it had to be now. Of course I went, and after greeting me, she handed me a
check for three thousand dollars made out to my daughter! Before I could speak, she
handed be three additional checks totaling fifteen hundred dollars made in favor of
my daughter's children. Her reason? She explained that she had suddenly decided the
day before to give what she had in cash to those she loved while she was still 'here' to
know of their happiness in receiving it!

"It would have happened anyway? No — not like this. Not within days of my
daughter's frantic need, and then her sudden transformation to a mood of joy. I know
that her imaginal act caused this wonderful change — bringing not only great joy to the
receiver but to the giver as well."

"P.S. ... I almost forgot to add that among the checks so lavishly given, was one for
me too, for three thousand dollars!" . . . M.B.

The boundless opportunities opened by recognizing the shift of the focus of
imagining is beyond measure. There are no boundaries. The drama of life is an
imaginal activity in which we bring to pass by our moods rather than by our physical
acts. Moods so ably guide all towards that which they affirm, they may be said to
create the circumstances of life and dictate the events. The mood of the wish fulfilled
is the high tide which lifts us easily off the bar of the senses where we usually lie

38

stranded. If we are aware of the mood and know this secret of imagining, we may
announce that all that our mood affirms will come to pass.

The following story is by a mother who succeeded in sustaining a seemingly "playful"
mood with startling results.

"Surely you've heard the 'old wives' tale about warts: That, if a wart is bought, it will
disappear? I've known this story from childhood but not until I heard your lectures did
I realize the truth hidden in the old tale. My boy, a lad of ten, had many large ugly
warts on his legs causing an irritation which had plagued him for years. I decided that
my sudden 'insight' could be used to his advantage. A boy has a lot of faith in his
mother as a rule so I asked him if he would like to be rid of his warts. He quickly
said, 'Yes,' but he did not want to go to a doctor. I asked him to play a little game with
me, that I would pay him a sum of money for each wart. This suited him fine; he
said — 'he didn't see how he could lose!' We arrived at a fair price, he thought, and
then I said, 'Now, I'm paying you good money for those warts; they no longer belong
to you. You never keep property belonging to someone else so you can no longer
keep those warts. They will disappear. It may take a day, two days or a month; but
remember, that I've bought them and they belong to me.'

"My son was delighted with our game and the results sound like something read in
old musty books on magic. But, believe me, within ten days the warts began to fade,
and, at the end of one month every wart on his body had completely disappeared!

"There is a sequel to this story for I've bought warts from many people. They, too,
thought it great fun and accepted my five, seven or ten cents a wart. In each case the
wart disappeared — but really — only one person believes me when I tell him his
Imagination, alone, took away the warts. That one
person is my young son. . . . J.R.

Man imagining himself into a mood takes on himself the results of the mood. If he
does not imagine himself into the mood, he is ever free of the result. The great Irish
mystic, A.E., wrote in "The Candle of Vision": "I became aware of a swift echo or
response to my own moods in circumstance which had seemed hitherto immutable in
its indifference ... I could prophesy from the uprising of new moods in myself that I,
without search, would soon meet people of a certain character, and so I met them.
Even inanimate things were under the sway of these affinities." But man need not
wait for the uprising of new moods in himself; he can create happy moods at will.

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CHAPTER 8

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

"A man that looks on glasse,

On it may stay his eye;

Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,

And then the heav'n espie."

— George Herbert

Objects, to be perceived, must first penetrate in some manner our brain; but we are
not — because of this — interlocked with our environment. Although normal
consciousness is focused on the senses and is usually restricted to them, it is possible
for man to pass through his sense fixation into any imaginal structure which he
conceives and so fully occupy it that it is more alive and more responsive than that on
which his senses "stay his eye." If this were not true, man would be an automaton
reflecting life, never affecting it. Man, who is all Imagination, is not tenant to the
brain but landlord; he need not rest content with the appearance of things; he can go
beyond perceptual to conceptual awareness.

This ability, to pass through the mechanical reflective structure of the senses, is the
most important discovery man can make. It reveals man as a center of imagining with
powers of intervention which enable him to alter the course of observed events
moving from success to success through a series of mental transformations in himself.
Attention, the spearhead of imagining, may be either attracted from without as his
senses "stay his eye" or directed from within "if he pleases" and through the senses
pass into the wish fulfilled.

To move from perceptual awareness, or things as they seem, to conceptual awareness,
or things as they ought to be, we imagine as vivid and as life-like a representation as
possible of what we would see, hear, and do, were we physically present, and
physically experiencing things as they ought to be and imaginatively participate in
that scene.

The following story tells of one who went "through the glass" and broke the chains
that bound her.

"Two years ago I was taken to the hospital with a serious blood clot condition which
apparently had affected the entire vascular system causing hardening of arteries and
arthritis. A nerve in my head was damaged and my thyroid enlarged. Doctors could
not agree on the cause of this condition, and all their treatments were completely
ineffective. I was forced to give up my every enjoyable activity and remain in bed
most of the time. My body, from hips to toes, felt as though it was encased and bound

40

by tight wires, and I couldn't put my feet on the floor without wearing heavy hip-
length elastic stockings.

"I knew something of your teaching and tried very hard to apply what I had heard, but
as my condition grew worse and I could no longer attend any of your lectures, my
despondency grew deeper. One day a friend sent me a postcard picturing the scene of
a lovely beach by the ocean. The picture was so beautiful I looked and looked at it
and began to remember past summer days at the seashore with my parents. For a
moment, the postcard picture seemed to become animated and flooding memories of
myself running free on the beach filled my mind. I felt the impact of my bare feet
against the hard wet sand; I felt the icy water running over my toes and heard the
crash of waves breaking on shore. This imaginal activity was so satisfying to me as I
lay in bed that I continued to imagine this wonderful scene, day after day, for about
one week.

"One morning I moved from my bed to a couch and had started to sit up when I was
seized with such an excruciating pain my entire body became paralyzed. I could
neither sit up nor lie down. This terrible pain lasted for more than a full minute, but
when it stopped — I was free! It seemed as if all the wires binding my legs had been
cut. One moment I was bound; the next moment I was free. Not by degrees, but
instantly." . . . V.H.

"We walk by faith, not by sight." — 2 Cor. 5:7

When we walk by sight, we know our way by objects which our eyes see. When we
walk by faith we order our life by scenes and actions which only imagination sees.

Man perceives by the Eye of Imagination or by Sense. But two mental attitudes to
perception are possible, the creative imaginative effort which meets with an
imaginative response, or the unimaginative "staying of the eye" which merely
reflects.

Man has within him the principle of life and the principle of death. One is the
imagination building its imaginal structures out of the generous dreams of fancy. The
other is the imagination building its imaginal structures from images reflected by the
chill wind of fact. One creates. The other perpetuates. Man must adopt either the way
of faith or the way of sight. To the extent that man builds from dreams of fancy, he is
alive; and, therefore, the development of the faculty to pass through the reflective
glass of the senses is an increase of life. It follows that restricting the imagination by
"staying the eye" on the reflective glass of the senses is a reduction of life.

The specious surface of fact reflects rather than discloses, deflecting the "Eye of
Imagination" from the truth that sets man free. "The Eye of Imagination," if not

41

deflected, looks on what ought to be there, not what is. However familiar the scene on
which sight rests, the "Eye of Imagination" could gaze on one never before witnessed.
It is this "Eye of Imagination" and only this that can free us from the sense fixation of
outer things which completely dominates our ordinary existence and keeps us looking
on the reflective glass of facts.

It is possible to pass from thinking of to thinking from; but the crucial matter is
thinking from, i.e., experiencing the state, for that experience means unification;
whereas in thinking of there is always subject and object — the thinking individual
and the thing thought of.

Self-abandonment. That is the secret. We have to abandon ourselves to the state, in
our love for the state, and in so doing live the life of the state and no more our present
state. Imagination seizes upon the life of the state and gives itself to the expression of
the life of that state.

Faith plus Love is self-commission. We can't commit ourselves to what we do not
love. "Never would you have made anything if you had not loved it." And to make the
state alive, one must become it. "I live, yet not I, God lives in me: and the life I now
live in the flesh, I live by the faith of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
God loved man, His created, and became man in faith that this act of self-commission
would transform the created into the creative.

We must be "imitators of God as dear children" and commit ourselves to what we
love, as God who loved us committed Himself to us. We must BE the state to
experience the state.

The center of conscious imagining can be shifted and what are now mere wishes —
imaginal activities keyed low — brought into penetrative focus and entered. Entrance
commits us to the state. The possibilities of such shifting of the center of imagining
are startling. The activities concerned are psychical throughout. The shifting of the
center of imagining is not brought about by spatial travel but by a change in what we
are aware of. The boundary of the world of sense is a subjective barrier. So long as
the senses take notice, the Eye of Imagination is deflected from the truth. We do not
get far unless we let go. This lady "let go" with immediate and miraculous results.

"Thank you for the 'golden key.' It has released my brother from the hospital, from
pain and probable death, for he was facing a fourth major operation with little hope of
recovery, I was very concerned and attempting to use what I had learned about my
Imagination, I first asked myself what my brother truly desired: 'Does he want to
continue in this body or does he desire to be free of it?' The question revolved itself
over and over in my mind and suddenly I felt that he would like to continue
remodeling his kitchen which he had been contemplating before his confinement in

42

the hospital. I knew my question had been answered, so I began to imagine from that
point.

"Attempting to 'see' my brother in the busy activity of remodeling, I suddenly found
myself gripping the back of a kitchen chair I had used many times when 'something'
happened, then suddenly I found myself standing beside my brother's bed in the
hospital. This was the last place I would have wanted to be, physically or mentally,
but there I was and my brother's hand reached up and clasped my hand tightly as I
heard him say, 'I knew you would come, Jo.' It was a well hand I clasped, strong and
sure, and the joy that filled and spilled over in my voice as I heard myself say, 'It's all
better now. You know it.' My brother didn't answer, but I distinctly heard a voice say
to me, 'Remember this moment.' I seemed to awake then, back in my own home.

"This took place the night after he had entered the hospital. The following day his
wife telephoned me saying, 'It is unbelievable! The doctor can't account for it, Jo, but
no operation is necessary. He's so improved that they have agreed to release him
tomorrow.' The following Monday my brother went back to his work and has been
perfectly well since that day." . . . J.S.

Not facts — but dreams of fancy shape our lives. She needed no compass to find her
brother, nor tools to operate, only the "Eye of Imagination." In the world of sense we
see what we have to see; in the world of Imagination we see what we want to see;
And seeing it, we create it for the world of sense to see. We see the outer world
automatically. Seeing what we want to see demands voluntary and conscious
imaginative effort. Our future is our own imaginal activity in its creative march.
Common sense assures us that we are living in a solid and sensible world but this so
seemingly solid world is — in reality — imaginal through and through.

The following story proves that it is possible for an individual to transfer the center of
imagining to some greater or lesser degree to a distant area, and not only do so
without moving physically, but to be visible to others who are present at that point in
space-time. And, if this be a dream, then,

"Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?"

"Seated in my living room in San Francisco, I imagined I was in my daughter's living
room in London, England. I surrounded myself so completely with that room which I
knew intimately, that I suddenly found myself actually standing in it. My daughter
was standing by her fireplace, her face turned away from me. A moment later she
turned and our eyes met. I saw such a startled, frightened expression on her face that
I, too, became emotionally upset and immediately found myself back in my own
living room in San Francisco.

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"Five days later I received an airmail letter from my daughter which had been written
on the day of my experiment with imaginal travel. In her letter she told me she had
'seen' me in her living room that day just as real as though I were actually standing
there in the flesh. She confessed she had been very frightened and that before she
could speak, I had vanished. The time of this 'visitation,' as she gave it in her letter,
was exactly the time I had begun the imaginative action allowing, of course, for the
difference in time between the two points. She explained that she told her husband of
this amazing experience and he insisted that she write to me immediately as he stated,
'Your mother must have died or is dying.' But I wasn't 'dead' or 'dying,' but very much
alive and very excited by this marvelous experience." . . .M.L.J.

"Nothing can act but where it is: with all my heart; only where is it?"

— Thomas Carlyle

Man is All Imagination. Therefore, a man must be where he is in imagination, for his
Imagination is himself. Imagination is active at and through any state that it is aware
of. If we take shifting of awareness seriously, there are possibilities beyond belief.
The senses join man in forced and unholy wedlock to what, were he imaginatively
awake, he would put asunder. We need not feed on sense-data. Shift the focus of
awareness and see what happens. However little we move mentally we should
perceive the world under a slightly changed aspect. Awareness is usually moved
about in space by movement of the physical organism but it need not be so restricted.
It can be moved by a change in what we are aware of.

Man is manifesting the power of Imagination whose limits he cannot define. To
realize that the Real Self — Imagination — is not something enclosed within the spatial
boundary of the body is most important. The foregoing; story proves, that when we
meet a person in the flesh, that his Real Self need not be present in space where his
body is. It also shows that sense-perception can be thrown into operation outside of
the normal physical means, and that the sense-data produced is of the same kind as
those which occur in normal perception. The idea in the mother's mind which started
the whole process going was the very definite idea of being in the place where her
daughter lived. And if the mother really were in that place, and if the daughter were
present, then she would have to be perceptible to her daughter.

We can only hope to understand this experience in imaginal, and not in mechanical or
materialistic terms. The mother imagined 'elsewhere' as being 'here.' London was just
as 'here' to her daughter living 'there' as San Francisco was 'here' to the mother living
'there.'

It hardly ever crosses our minds that this world might be different in essence from
what common sense tells us it so obviously is. Blake writes: "I question not my
Corporeal or Vegatative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a

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Sight. I look thro' it and not with it." This looking through the eye not only shifts
consciousness to other parts of "this world" but to "other worlds" as well.
Astronomers must wish they knew more of this "looking through the eye"; this mental
traveling that mystics practice so easily.

"I travel' d thro' a land of men,

A land of men and women too,

And heard and saw such dreadful things
As cold earth wanderers never knew."

Mental traveling has been practiced by awakened men and women since the earliest
days. Paul states: "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to
the third heaven — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God
knows." 2. Cor. 12: Paul is telling us that he is that man and that he traveled by the
power of imagination or Christ. In his next letter to the Corinthians he writes: "Test
yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?" We need not be 'dead' in
order to enjoy spiritual privileges. "Man is All Imagination and God is Man." Test
yourselves as this mother did.

Sir Arthur Eddington said that all we have a right to say of the external world is that it
is a "shared experience." Things are more or less 'real' according to the extent to
which they are capable of being shared with others or with ourselves at another time.
But there is no hard and fast line.

Accepting Eddington's definition of reality as "shared experience," the above story is
as 'real' as the earth or a color for it was shared by both mother and daughter. The
range of imagining is such that I must confess that I do not know what limits, if any,
there are to its ability to create reality.

All these stories show us one thing — that an imaginal activity implying the wish
fulfilled must start in the imagination apart from the evidence of the senses in that
Journey that leads to the realization of desire.

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CHAPTER 9

ENTER INTO

"If the Spectator would Enter into these Images in his Imagination, approaching them
on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought, if he could . . . make a Friend &
Companion of one of these Images of wonder, which always entreats him to leave
mortal things (as he must know) then would he arise from his Grave, then would he
meet the Ford in the Air & then he would be happy. " — BLAKE

Imagination it seems will do nothing that we wish until we enter into the image of the
wish fulfilled. Does not this entering into the image of the wish fulfilled resemble
Blake's "Void outside of Existence which if enter'd into Englobes itself & becomes a
Womb?" Is this not the true interpretation of the mythical story of Adam and Eve?
Man and his emanation? Are not man's dreams of fancy his Emanation, his Eve in
whom "He plants himself in all her Nerves, just as a Husbandman his mould; And she
becomes his dwelling place and garden fruitful seventy fold?"

The secret of creation is the secret of imagining — first, desiring and then assuming
the feeling of the wish fulfilled until the dream of fancy, 'the Void outside existence,'
is enter'd and 'englobes itself and becomes a womb, a dwelling place and garden
fruitful seventy fold.' Note well that Blake urges us to enter info these images. This
entering into the image makes it 'englobe itself and become a womb.' Man, by
entering a state impregnates it and causes it to create what the union implies. Blake
tells us that these images are 'Shadowy to those who dwell not in them, mere
possibilities; but to those who enter into them they seem the only substances. . . .'

On my way to the West Coast I stopped in Chicago to spend the day with friends. My
host was recovering from a severe illness and his doctor advised him to move to a
one-story house. Acting upon the doctor's advice, he had purchased a one-story house
suited to his needs; but he now was confronted with the fact that there seemed to be
no buyer for his large three-story home. When I arrived he was very discouraged. In
trying to explain the law of constructive imagining to my host and his wife, I told
them the story of a very prominent New York woman who had come to see me
concerning the rental of her apartment. She maintained a lovely city apartment and a
country home, but it was absolutely essential that she rent her apartment if she and
her family were to spend the summer at their country home.

In previous years the apartment had been rented without any difficulty early in the
Spring, but at the time she came to see me the season for summer sublets was
seemingly over. Although the apartment had been in the hands of good real estate
agents, no one had seemed interested in renting it. I told her what to do in her
imagination. She did it and in less than twenty-four hours her apartment was rented.

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I explained how she, by the constructive use of her imagination, had rented her
apartment. At my suggestion, before she went to sleep that night in her apartment in
the city, she imagined she was lying in her bed in her country home. In her
imagination she viewed the world from the country house rather than from the city
apartment. She smelled the fresh country air. She made this so real that she actually
drifted off to sleep feeling that she was in the country. That was on a Thursday night.
At nine o'clock the following Saturday morning, she phoned me from her country
home and told me that on Friday a highly desirable tenant, who met all of her
requirements, not only rented her apartment but rented it on the one condition that he
could move in that very day.

I suggested to my friends that they build an imaginal structure as this woman had
done, and that was to sleep, imagining they were physically present in their new
home, feeling they had sold their old home. I explained to them the wide difference
between thinking of the image of their new house, and thinking from the image of
their new house. Thinking of it is a confession they are not in it; thinking from it is
proof that they are in it. Entering into the image would give substance to the image.
Their physical occupancy of the new house would follow automatically.

I explained that what the world looks like depends entirely on where man is when he
makes his observation. And man, being "All Imagination," must be where he is in
imagination. This concept of causation disturbed them, for it smacked of magic or
superstition, but they promised they would try it. I left that night for California and
the following evening the conductor on the train in which I was traveling handed me a
telegram. It read: "House sold midnight last." One week later they wrote and told me
that the very night I left Chicago they fell asleep physically in the old house but
mentally in the new, viewing the world from the new home, imagining how things
would "sound" if this were true. They were awakened that very night from their sleep
to be told the house was sold.

Not until the image is entered, until Eve is known, does the event burst upon the
world. The wish fulfilled must be conceived in the imagination of man before the
event can evolve out of what Blake calls 'the Void.'

This next story proves that by shifting the focus of her imagining, Mrs. A. F. entered
physically into where she had persisted in being imaginatively.

"Soon after our marriage, my husband and I decided that our greatest joint desire was
a year in Europe. This objective may seem reasonable to a lot of people, but to us —
tied to a narrow sphere of limited finances — it seemed not only unreasonable but
completely ridiculous. Europe might as well have been another planet. But I had
heard your teaching, so I persisted in falling asleep in England! Why England
necessarily, I cannot tell, except that I had seen a current motion picture featuring the

47

area around Buckingham Palace and had promptly fallen in love with the scene. All I
did in my imagination was to stand quietly outside the great iron gates and feel the
cold metal bars gripped tightly in my hands as I viewed the Palace.

"For many, many nights I felt an intense joy at 'being' there and fell asleep in this
happy state. Soon after, my husband met a stranger at a party who, within one month,
was instrumental in securing a teaching fellowship for him at a great university.
Imagine my excitement when I heard the university was in England! Tied to a narrow
sphere? Within another month we were crossing the Atlantic and our supposedly
insurmountable difficulties melted as though they never existed. We had our year in
Europe, one of the happiest years of my life." . . . M.F.

What the world looks like depends entirely on where man is when he makes his
observations. And man, being 'All Imagination,' must be where he is in imagination.

"The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner-stone." That stone
is Imagining. I acquaint you with this secret and leave you to Act or Re-act.

"This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold;

For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for lesse be told."

— George Herbert

"My home is old but it is mine. I wanted the exterior painted and the interior
redecorated, yet I had no money to accomplish either objective. You told us to 'live'
as though our desire is already a reality, and this I began to do — imagining my old
house with a brand-new coat of paint, new furnishings, new decoration and all the
trimmings. I walked, in my imagination, through the newly decorated rooms. I
walked around the outside admiring the fresh paint; and, at the end of my imaginal
act, I handed the contractor a check for payment in full. I entered this imaginal scene
faithfully as often as I could during the day and each night before I fell asleep.

"Within two weeks I received a registered letter from Lloyd's of London, telling me I
had inherited seven thousand dollars from a woman I had never met! I had known her
brother slightly almost forty years before and had performed a small service fifteen
years ago for the lady when this brother had died in our country, and she had written
to me asking for particulars regarding his death which I was able to provide. I had not
heard from her since that time.

"Now, here was the check for seven thousand dollars — more than enough to cover
the cost of my house restoration, plus many, many other things I desired." . . . E.C.A.

"He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and

48

better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all. "

— Blake

Unless the individual imagines himself someone else, or somewhere else, the present
conditions and circumstances of his life will continue in being and his problems recur,
for all events renew themselves from his constant images. By him they were made; by
him they continue in being; and by him they can cease to be.

The secret of causation is in the assembled imagery — but a word of warning — the
assemblage must have meaning; it must imply something or it will not form the
creative activity — The Word.

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CHAPTER 10

THINGS WHICH DO NOT APPEAR

. . what is seen was made out of things which do not appear. " — Heb. 11:3

" Human history, with its forms of governments, its revolutions, its wars, and in fact
the rise and fall of nations, could be written in terms of the rise and fall of ideas
implanted in the minds of men. " — Herbert Hoover

"The secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which the
mystic aspires. Supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight He in the far-off
solution of this mystery. " — Douglas Fawcett

To refuse to recognize the creative power of man's invisible, imaginal activity, is too
great to be argued with. Man, through his imaginal activity, literally "calls into
existence the things that do not exist." By man's imaginal activity, all things are made,
and without such activity, "was not anything made that was made."

Such causal activity could be defined as, an imaginal assemblage of images, which
occurring, some physical event invariably takes place. It is for us to assemble the
images of happy outcome and then keep from interfering. The event must not be
forced but allowed to happen.

If imagination is the only thing that acts, or is, in existing beings or men (as Blake
believed) then we should never be certain that it was not some woman treading in the
wine press who began that subtle change in men's minds.

This grandmother is daily treading the wine press for her little grand-daughter. She
writes:

"This is one of those things that make my family and friends say, 'we just don't
understand it.' Kim is two-and-a-half years old now. I took care of her for a month
after she was born and did not see her again until a year ago, and then, only for two
weeks. However, during this past year every day I have taken her on my lap — in my
imagination — and cuddled her and talked to her.

"In these imaginal acts I go over all the wonderful things about Kim: 'God is growing
through me; God is loving through me,' etc. At first, I would get the response of a
very young child. When I started 'God is growing through me' — she would reply,
'Me.' Now — as I start she completes the whole sentence. Another thing that has
happened is, as the months have passed, as I take her — in my imagination — on my lap
she has grown constantly larger and heavier.

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"Kim hasn't even seen a picture of me in this past year. At the most, I could only be a
name to her. Now, some time each day, her family tells me, she starts talking about
me — to no one in particular — just talking. Sometimes it goes on for an hour; or she
goes to the phone and pretends to call. In her monologue are such bits as: 'My Dee
Dee loves me. My Dee Dee always comes to see me every day.'

"Even though I know what I have been doing in my imagination, it has caused me,
too, 'to wonder much.' "... U.K.

All imaginative men and women are forever casting forth enchantments, and all
passive men and women, who have no powerful imaginative lives, are continually
passing under the spell of their power.

There is no form in nature, which is not produced by, and sustained by some imaginal
activity. Therefore, any change in the imaginal activity must result in a corresponding
change in form. To imagine a substitute-image for unwanted or defective content is to
create it. If only we persist in our ideal imaginal activity and do not let lesser
satisfactions suffice, ours shall be the victory.

"When I read in 'Seedtime and Harvest' the story of the school teacher who, through
her imagination, in daily revision, transformed a delinquent pupil into a lovely girl, I
decided to 'do' something about a young boy in my husband's school.

"To tell all the problems involved would take pages, for my husband has never had
such a difficult child nor such a trying parent situation. The lad was too young to be
expelled, yet the teachers refused to have him in their classes. To make matters worse,
the mother and grandmother literally 'camped' on the school grounds making trouble
for everyone.

"I wanted to help the boy, but, I also, wanted to help my husband. So, nightly, I
constructed two scenes in my imagination: one, I 'saw' a perfectly normal, happy
child; two, I 'heard' my husband say, 'I can't believe it, dear, but do you know "R" is
acting like a normal boy, now, and it is heaven not having those two women around.'

"After two months of persisting in my imaginal play, night after night, my husband
came home and said, 'It's like heaven around school' — not exactly the same words
but close enough for me. The grandmother had become involved in something that
took her out of town and the mother had to accompany her.

"At the same time a new teacher had welcomed the challenge of 'R' and he was
progressing wonderfully well into all I imagined for him." . . . G.B.

It is useless to hold standards that we do not apply. Unlike Portia, who said: "I can
easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow

51

mine own teaching."

G. B. followed her own teaching. It is fatally easy to make the acceptance of the
imaginal faith a substitute for living by it.

". . . he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound. . . ." — Isaiah 61:1

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CHAPTER 11

THE POTTER

"Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words. So,
/ went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the
vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into
another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. " — Jeremiah 18:2-4

The word translated Potter means imagination. Out of material others would have
thrown away as useless, an awakened imagination refashions it as it ought to be. "O
Lord, thou art our father, we are the clay, and thou art our potter; we are all the work
of thy hand." Isaiah 64:8

This conception of creation as a work of imagination, and the Lord our Father as our
imagination, will take us further into the mystery of creation than any other guide.

The only reason people do not believe in this identity of God and human imagination
is that they are unwilling to assume the responsibility for their frightful misuse of
imagination. Divine Imagination has descended to the level of human imagination,
that human imagination may ascend to Divine Imagination.

The 8th Psalm says that man was made a little lower than God — not a little lower than
the angels — as the King James Version mistakenly translates it. Angels are the
emotional dispositions of man and are therefore his servant — and not his superior — as
the author of Hebrews tells us. (Heb. 1: 14.)

Imagination is the Real Man and is one with God.

Imagination creates, conserves and transforms. Imagination is radically creative when
all imaginative activity based on memory disappears.

Imagination is conservative when its imaginal activity is fed with images supplied
mainly by memory. Imagination is transformative when it varies a theme already in
being; when it mentally alters a fact of life; when it leaves the fact out of the
remembered experience or puts something in its place if it upsets the harmony it
desires.

Through the use of her imagination this talented young artist has made her dream a
reality.

"Ever since I entered into the art field I have enjoyed doing sketches and paintings for
children's rooms. However, I have been discouraged by advisers and friends who
were far more experienced in the 'field' than I. They liked my work, admired my

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talent, but said I would not get recognition nor pay for this type of work.

"Somehow, I always felt I would — but how? Then last fall I heard your lectures and
read your books and I decided to let my imagination create the reality I desired. This
is what I did daily: I imagined I was in a gallery — there was a great deal of
excitement about me — on the walls hung my 'art' — only mine (a one-woman show)
— and I saw red stars on many of the pictures. This would indicate that they had been
sold.

"This is what happened: Just before Christmas I did a mobile for a friend who showed
it in turn to a friend of hers who owns an art-import shop in Pasadena. He expressed a
desire to meet me — so I took a few samples of my work along. When he looked at
the very first painting he said he would like to give me 'a one-woman show' in the
spring.

"The night of the opening, April 17, an interior decorator came and liked and
commissioned me to do a collage for a little boy's room, which will appear in the
September issue of Good Housekeeping for the 1961 House of the Year.

"Later, during the showing another decorator came and admired my work so much, he
asked if he might arrange for me to meet the 'right' interior decorators and the 'right'
owners of galleries who would buy and display my work properly. Incidentally, the
show was a financial success for the owner of the gallery, as well as for me.

"The interesting thing about this is that seemingly these three men came to me 'out of
the blue.' Certainly, I made no effort during the time of my 'imagining' to contact
anyone; but, now, I am getting recognition and have a market for my work. And,
now, I know without a shadow of doubt that there is no 'no' when you seriously apply
this principle that 'imagining creates reality.' "... G.L.

She tested the Potter and proved His creativity in performance. Only the indolent
mind would fail to rise to this challenge. Paul states, "the spirit of God dwells in you,"
now, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are holding to your faith. Test
yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you fail to
meet the test! I hope you will find out that we have not failed." 2. Cor: 13.5-6

If "all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that
was made," it should not be difficult for man to test himself to find out who this
creator in himself is. The test will prove to man that his imagination is the One, "who
gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist." Rom:4.17

The Potter's presence in us is inferred from what He does there. We cannot see Him
there as One not ourselves. The nature of the Potter — Jesus Christ — is to create and
there is no creation without Him.

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Every recorded story in this book is just such a test as Paul asked the Corinthians to
make. God really and truly exists in man — in every human being. God wholly
becomes us. He is not our virtue but our Real Selves — Our Imagination.

The following illustrations from the mineral world may help us to see how Supreme
Imagining and Human Imagining could be one and the same power and yet be vastly
different in their creativity. Diamond is the world's hardest mineral. Graphite, used in
'lead' pencils, is one of the softest. Yet both minerals are pure carbon. The vast
difference in the properties of the two forms of carbon is believed to be caused by a
different arrangement of the carbon atoms. But whether the difference is produced by
a different arrangement of the carbon atoms or not — all agree that Diamond and
Graphite are one substance, pure carbon.

The purpose of life is the creative realization of desire. Man, lacking desire, could not
exist efficiently in a world of continuous problems requiring continuing solutions. A
desire is an awareness of something we lack or need to make life more enjoyable.
Desires always have some personal gain in view. The greater the anticipated gain, the
more intense the desire. There is no really unselfish desire. Even when our desire is
for another, we are still seeking to gratify desire. To attain our desire we should
imagine scenes implying their fulfillment, and enact the scene in our imagination, if
only momentarily, with a joy sufficiently felt within its limits to make it natural. It is
like a child dressing up and playing "Queen." We must imagine we are what we
would like to be. We must play it in imagination first — not as a spectator — as an
actor.

This lady imaginatively played "Queen" by being where she wanted to be in her
imagination. She was the true actor in this theatre.

"My desire was to attend a matinee performance of a famous pantomimist currently
playing in one of the largest theatres of our city. Because of the intimate nature of this
art, I wanted to sit in the orchestra; but I didn't have even the price of a balcony ticket.
The night I determined to have this pleasure for myself, in my imagination, I fell
asleep watching the wondrous performer. In my imaginal act I sat in an orchestra-
center seat, heard the applause as the curtain rose and the artist came on stage, and I
actually felt the intense excitement of this experience.

"The next day — the day of the matinee performance — my financial condition had not
changed. I had exactly one dollar and thirty-seven cents in my purse. I knew I must
use the dollar to buy gas for my car which would leave me with thirty-seven cents,
but I also knew I had faithfully slept in the feeling of being at that performance, so I
dressed myself for the theatre. While changing articles from one purse to another, I
found a dollar bill and forty-five cents in change hidden in the pocket of my seldom-
used opera purse. I grinned to myself, realizing that gasoline money had been given to

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me; so would the balance of my theatre ticket be given to me. Gaily I finished
dressing and left for the theatre.

"Standing before the ticket window, my confidence dwindled as I gazed at the prices
and saw three- seventy-five for orchestra seats. With a feeling of dismay I turned away
quickly and walked across the street to a cafe for a cup of tea. I had spent sixteen
cents on my tea before I remembered seeing the price of balcony seats on the ticket
window list. Hurriedly, I counted my change and found I had one dollar and sixty-six
cents left. Running back to the theatre, I bought the cheapest seat available which cost
a dollar and fifty-five cents. With one dime left in my purse, I went through the
entrance and the usher tore my ticket in half saying, "Upstairs, left, please." The
performance was about to begin, but ignoring the usher's instructions, I walked into
the main floor lady's restroom. Still determined to sit in the orchestra section, I sat
down, closed my eyes and kept my inward 'sight' riveted on the stage from the
direction of the orchestra. At that moment, a group of women walked into the
restroom, all talking at once, but I heard only one conversation as a woman speaking
to her companion, said, 'But I waited and waited until the last moment. Then she
called and said she couldn't make it. I would have given her ticket away but it's too
late now. Not realizing it, I handed the usher both tickets and he tore them in half
before I could stop him.' I almost laughed aloud. Getting up, I walked over to this
lady and asked if I might use the extra ticket she had, instead of the balcony seat I had
bought. She was charming and kindly invited me to join her party. The ticket she
handed me was for the orchestra section, center seat, six rows from the stage. I sat in
that seat only moments before the curtain rose on a performance I had witnessed the
night before from that seat — in my Imagination.". . . J.R.

We must actually BE, in Imagination. It is one thing to think of the end, and another
thing to think from the end. To think from the end; to enact the end, is to create
reality. The inner actions must correspond to the actions we would physically perform
"after these things should be."

To live wisely we must be aware of our imaginal activity, and see to it that it is
faithfully shaping the end we desire. The world is clay; our Imagination is the Potter.
We should always imagine ends that are of value or promise well.

"He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence."

What's done flows from what's imagined. Outward forms reveal the imaginings of
Man.

"Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest and passage through these looms God
ordered motion, but ordained no rest."

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"I run a small business, solely owned, and a few years ago it seemed that my venture
would end in failure. For some months, sales had fallen steadily and I found myself in
a financial 'jam' — along with thousands of other small businessmen, as this period
spanned one of our country's minor recessions. I was badly in debt and needed at least
three thousand dollars almost immediately. My auditors advised me to close my doors
and try to salvage what I could. Instead, I turned to my Imagination. I knew your
teaching but had never actually attempted to solve any problem in this manner. I was
frankly skeptical of the entire idea that imagination can create reality but I was also
desperate; and desperation forced me to test your teaching.

"I imagined my office receiving four thousand dollars unexpectedly in remittances
due. This money would have to come from new orders as my accounts receivable
were practically nonexistent, but this seemed far-fetched as I hadn't received this
much in sales during the last four months or more. Nevertheless, I kept my imaginal
picture of receiving this amount of money steadily before me for three days. Early the
fourth morning a customer I had not heard from in months called me on the telephone
asking me to come and see him personally. I was to bring a quotation previously
given him for machinery needed by his factory. The quotation was months old, but I
dug it out of my files and lost no time in arriving at his office that day. I wrote out the
order which he signed, but I saw no immediate help for me in the transaction as the
equipment he wanted would take from four to six months for factory delivery, and of
course, my customer did not have to pay for it until delivered.

"I thanked him for the order and rose to leave. He stopped me at the door and handed
me a check for a little over four thousand dollars, saying, 'I want to pay for the
merchandise now, in advance — for tax puiposes, you know. You don't mind?' No, I
didn't mind. I realized what had happened the moment I took that check into my
hands. Within three days my imaginal act had done for me what I hadn't been able to
do in months of desperate financial shuffling. I know, now, that imagination could
have brought forty thousand dollars into my business just as easily as four
thousands." . . . L.N.C.

"O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; we are all the
work of thy hand."

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CHAPTER 12

ATTITUDES

"Mental Things are alone Real; what is call'd Corporeal, Nobody Knows of its
Dwelling Place: it is in Fallacy, and its Existence an Imposture. Where is the
Existence Out of Mind or Thought? Where is it but in the Mind of a Fool?" — Blake

Memory, though faulty, is adequate to the call for sameness. If we remember another
as we have known him, we recreate him in that image, and the past will be recognized
in the present. Imagining creates reality. If there is room for improvement, we should
re-construct him with new content; visualize him as we would like him to be, rather
than have him bear the burden of our memory of him. "Everything possible to be
believed is an image of truth. "

The following story is by one who believes that imagining creates reality and acting
on this belief changed his attitude toward a stranger and bore witness to this change in
reality.

"More than twenty years ago, when I was a 'green' farm boy newly arrived in Boston
to attend school, a 'panhandler' asked me for money for a meal. Although the money I
had was pitifully insufficient for my own needs, I gave him what was in my pocket. A
few hours later the same man, by this time staggering drunk, stopped me again and
asked for money. I was so outraged to think the money I could so ill afford had been
put to such use, I made myself a solemn pledge that I would never again listen to the
plea of a street beggar. Through the years I kept my pledge, but every time I refused
anyone, my conscience needled me. I felt guilty even to the point of developing a
sharp pain in my stomach, but I couldn't bring myself to unbend.

"The early part of this year, a man stopped me as I was walking my dog and asked for
money so he could eat. True to the old pledge, I refused him. His manner was
gracious as he accepted my refusal. He even admired my dog and spoke of a family in
New York state he knew that raised cocker spaniels. This time my conscience was
really pricking me! As he went on his way, I determined to remake that scene as I
wished it had been, so I stopped right there on the street, closed my eyes for only a
few moments and enacted the scene differently. In my imagination I had the same
man approach me, only this time he opened the conversation by admiring my dog.
After we had talked a moment, I had him say, 'I don't like to ask you this, but I really
need something to eat. I have a job that begins tomorrow morning, but I've been out
of work and tonight I'm hungry.' I then reached into my imaginary pocket, pulled out
an imaginary five-dollar bill and gladly gave it to him. This imaginal act immediately
dissolved the guilty feeling and the pain.

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"I know from your teaching that an imaginal act is fact, so I knew I could grant
anyone what he asked and by faith in the imaginal act, consent to the reality of his
having it.

"Four months later as I was again walking my dog, the same man approached me and
opened the conversation by admiring my dog. 'Here's a beautiful dog,' he said. 'Young
man, I don't suppose you remember me, but awhile back I asked you for some money
and you very kindly said "no." I say "kindly," because if you had given it to me I
would still be asking for money. Instead, I got a job that very next morning, and now
I'm on my feet and have some self-respect again.'

"I knew his job was a fact when I imagined it that night some four months before, but
I won't deny there was immense satisfaction in having him appear in the flesh to
confirm it!" . . . F.B.

"I have no silver and gold, but I give you what I have." . . . Acts 3:6

None is to be discarded, all must be saved, and our Imagination reshaping memory is
the process whereby this salvation is brought to pass. To condemn the man for having
lost his way is to punish the already punished. "O whom should I pity if I pity not the
sinner who is gone astray?" Not what the man was but what he may become should
be our imaginal activity.

"Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt —

Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown,

Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile,

And trembled with fear at your frown?"

If we imagine no worse of him than he of himself, he would pass as excellent. It's not
the man at his best, but the imaginist exercising the spirit of forgiveness that performs
the miracle. Imagining with new content transformed both the man who asked and the
man who gave. Imagining has not yet had its due in the systems either of moralists or
educators. When it does, there will be "the opening of the prison to those who are
bound."

Nothing has existence for us save through the memory we have of it, therefore we
should remember it not as it was — unless of course, it was altogether desirable — but
as we desire it to be. Inasmuch as imagining is creative, our memory of another either
furthers or hinders him, and makes his upward or downward way easier and swifter.

"There is no coal of character so dead that it will not glow and flame if but slightly
turned."

The following story shows that imagining can make rings, and husbands, and move

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people "to China!

"My husband, child of a broken home and raised by beloved grandparents, was never
'close' to his mother — nor she to him. A woman of sixty-three and a divorcee for
thirty-two of those years, she was lonely and embittered; and my relationship with her
was strained as I attempted to 'stay in the middle.' By her own admission her great
desire was to remarry for companionship, but she believed this to be impossible at her
age. My husband would often state to me that he hoped she would remarry and, as he
fervently put it, 'perhaps live way out of town!'

"I had the same wish and, as I put it, 'perhaps move to China?' Being wary of my
personal motive for this wish, I knew I must change my feeling toward her in my
imaginal drama and at the same time 'give' her what she wanted. I began by seeing
her in my imagination as a completely changed personality — a happy, joyous
woman, secure and contented in a new relationship. Every time I thought of her, I
would see her mentally as a 'new' woman.

"About three weeks later, she came to our house for a visit bringing a friend she had
met many months previously. The man had recently become a widower; he was her
age, secure financially and had grown children and grandchildren. We liked him and I
was excited because it was obvious they liked each other. But my husband still
thought 'it' was impossible. I didn't.

"From that day on, every time her image rose in my mind, I 'saw' her extending her
left hand toward me; and I admired the 'ring' on her finger. One month later, she and
her friend came to visit us and as I walked forward to greet them, she proudly
extended her left hand. The ring was on her finger.

"Two weeks later she was married — and we haven't seen her since. She lives in a
brand-new home . . . 'way out of town' and as her new husband dislikes the long drive
to our house, she might as well have 'moved to China'!" . . . J.B.

There is a wide difference between the will to resist an activity and the decision to
change it. He who changes an activity acts; whereas he who resists an activity, re-
acts. One creates; the other perpetuates.

Nothing is real beyond the imaginative patterns we make of it. Memory, no less than
desire, resembles a day-dream. Why make it a day-mare? Man can forgive only if he
treats memory as a day-dream, and shapes it to his heart's desire.

R.K. learned that we may rob others of their abilities by our attitudes toward them. He
changed his attitude and thereby changed a fact.

"I am not a money lender nor am I in the investment business as such, but a friend

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and business acquaintance came to me for a substantial loan in order to expand his
plant. Because of personal friendship, I granted the loan with reasonable interest rates
and gave my friend the right of renewal at the end of one year. When the first year
term expired, he was behind in his interest payments and requested a thirty-day
extension on the note. I granted this request, but at the end of thirty days he was still
unable to meet the note and asked for an additional extension.

"As I previously stated, I am not in the business of lending money. Within twenty
days I needed full payment of the loan to meet debts of my own. But I consented
again to extend the note although my own credit was now in serious jeopardy. The
natural thing to do was to apply legal pressure to collect and a few years ago I would
have done just that. Instead, I remembered your warning 'not to rob others of their
ability,' and I realized that I had been robbing my friend of his ability to pay what he
owed.

"For three nights I constructed a scene in my imagination in which I heard my friend
tell me that unexpected orders had flooded his desk so rapidly, he was now able to
pay the loan in full. The fourth day I received a telephone call from him. He told me
that by what he called 'a miracle' he had received so many orders, and big ones, too,
he was now able to pay back my loan including all interest due and, in fact, had just
mailed a check to me for the entire amount." . . . R.K.

There is nothing more fundamental to the secret of imagining than the distinction
between imagining and the state imagined.

"Mental Things are alone Real ..." "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of
truth."

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CHAPTER 13

ALL TRIVIA

"General knowledge is remote knowledge; It is in particulars that wisdom consists
And happiness too. " — Blake

We must use our imagination to achieve particular ends, even if the ends are all trivia.
Because men do not clearly define and imagine particular ends the results are
uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain. To imagine particular ends is to
discriminate clearly. "How do we distinguish the oak from the beech, the horse from
the ox, but by the bounding outline?" Definition asserts the reality of the particular
thing against the formless generalizations which flood the mind.

Life on earth is a kindergarten for image making. The bigness or littleness of the
object to be created is not in itself important. "The great and golden rule of art, as well
as of life," said Blake, "is this: That the more distinct, sharp and wirey the bounding
line, the more perfect the work of art, and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the
evidence of weak imitation. What is it that builds a house and plants a garden but the
definite and determinate? . . . leave out this line, and you leave out life itself."

The following stories are concerned with the acquiring of seemingly little things, or
'toys' as I call them, but they are important because of the clear imaginal images that
created the toys. The author of the first story is one of whom it is said, 'she has
everything.' This is true. She has financial, social and intellectual security.

She writes:

"As you know, through your teaching and through my practice of that teaching, I have
completely changed myself and my life. Two weeks ago when you spoke of 'toys' I
realized I had never used my imagination for the getting of 'things' and I decided it
would be fun to try it. You told of a young woman who was given a hat by merely
wearing that hat in her imagination. The last thing on earth I needed was a hat, but I
wanted to test my imagination for this 'getting of things,' so I selected a hat pictured
in a fashion magazine. I cut the picture out and stuck it on the mirror of my dressing
table. I studied the picture carefully. Then, I shut my eyes, and in my imagination, I
put that hat on my head and 'wore' it as I walked out of the house. I did this just once.

"The following week I met some friends for luncheon and one of them was wearing
'the' hat. We all admired it. The very next day, I received a parcel by special delivery
messenger. 'The' hat was in the parcel. The friend who had worn it the day before had
sent the hat to me with a note saying she did not particularly care for the hat and
didn't know why she had bought it in the first place, but for some reason she thought
it would look well on me — and would I please accept it!" . . . G.L.

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Movement from 'dreams to things' is the power driving humanity.

"We must live wholly on the level of Imagination. And it must be consciously and
deliberately undertaken."

"All my life I have loved birds. I enjoy watching them — hearing their chatter —
feeding them; and I am particularly fond of the small sparrow. For many months I
have fed them crumbs of morning bread, wild bird seed and anything I believed they
would eat.

"And for all those months I have been frustrated as I watched the larger birds —
particularly the pigeons — command the area, gobbling up most of the good seed and
leaving the husks for my sparrows.

"To use my imagination on this problem seemed facetious to me at first, but the more
I thought of it, the more interesting the idea became. So, one night I set about 'seeing'
the little birds come in for their full share of daily offerings, and I would 'tell' my wife
that the pigeons no longer interfered with my sparrows but took their share like
gentlemen and then left the area. I continued this imaginary action for almost one
month. Then one morning I noticed that the pigeons had disappeared. The sparrows
had breakfast all to themselves for a few days; for those few days no larger bird
entered the area. They did return eventually, but to this day they have never again
infringed on the area occupied by my sparrows. They stay together, eating what I put
out for them, leaving a full share of the area to my tiny friends. And do you know . . .
I actually believe the sparrows understand; they no longer seem to be afraid when I
walk among them." . . . R.K.

This lady proves that unless our heart is in the task, unless we imagine ourselves right
into the feeling of our wish fulfilled, we are not there — for we are all imagination,
and must be where, and what we are in imagination.

"In early February my husband and I had been in our new house one month — a
home lovely beyond telling, perched on a rugged cliff with the ocean for our front
yard, wind and sky for neighbors and seagulls for guests — we were ecstatic. If you
have experienced the joy and woe of building your own home, you know how
completely filled with happiness you are and how completely empty your purse is: A
hundred lovely things clamored to be bought for that house, but the one thing we
wanted most of all was the most useless — a picture. Not just any picture but a wild
wonderful scene of the sea dominated by a great white clipper ship. This picture had
been in our thoughts all the months of building and we left one living room wall free
of paneling to hold it. My husband mounted decorative red and green ship lanterns on
the wall to frame our picture, but the picture — itself — would have to wait. Draperies,
carpeting — all the practical items must come first. Perhaps so, but that didn't stop

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either one of us from 'seeing' that picture, in our imagination, on that wall.

"One day while shopping, I strolled into a small art gallery and as I walked through
the door I stopped so suddenly a gentleman walking behind me crashed into an easel.
I apologized and pointed to a painting hanging at head-height across the room.

"'That's what did it! I've never seen anything so wonderful!' He introduced himself as
the owner of the gallery and said, 'Yes, an original by the greatest English painter of
clipper ships the world has known.' He went on to tell me about the artist, but I wasn't
listening. I could not take my eyes from that wonderful ship; and suddenly I
experienced a very strange thing. It was only a moment in time, but the art gallery
faded and I 'saw' that picture on my wall. I'm afraid the owner thought me a little
giddy, and I was, but I finally managed to return my attention to his voice when he
mentioned an astronomical price. I smiled and said, 'Perhaps some day. . .' He
continued to tell me about the painter and also about an American artist who was the
only living lithographer capable of copying the great English master. He said, 'If
you're very lucky, you may pick up one of his prints. I've seen his work. It's perfect
down to the last detail. Many people prefer prints to paintings.'

" 'Prints' or 'paintings,' I knew nothing about the values of either, and anyway, all I
wanted was that scene. When my husband returned home that evening, I talked of
nothing but that painting and pleaded with him to visit the gallery and see it. 'Maybe
we could find a print of it somewhere. The man said . . .' 'Yes,' he interrupted, 'but
you know we can't afford any picture now . . .' Our conversation ended there, but that
night after dinner, I stood in our living room and 'saw' that picture on our wall.

"The next day my husband had an appointment with a client which he did not want to
keep. But the appointment was kept, and my husband did not return home until after
dark, When he walked through the front door, I was busy in another part of the house
and called a greeting to him. A few minutes later I heard hammering and walked into
the living room to see what he was doing. On our wall hung my picture. In my first
moment of intense joy I remembered the man in the art gallery, saying ... 'If you're
very lucky, you may pick up one of his prints. . .' Lucky? Well, here is my husband's
part of this story:

"Making the call already mentioned, he entered one of the poorest, meanest little
houses he had ever been in. The client introduced himself and led my husband into a
tiny dark dining area where the two of them sat down at a bare table. As my husband
put his brief case on the table top, he looked up and saw the picture on a wall. He
confessed to me he had conducted a very sloppy interview because he couldn't take
his eyes from that picture. The client signed the contract and gave a check as down
payment which, as my husband believed at the time, was ten dollars short.
Mentioning this fact to the client, he said the check given was every cent he could

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afford but added . . . "I've noticed your interest in that picture. It was here when I took
this place. I don't know to whom it belonged, but I don't want it. If you'll put the ten
dollars in for me, I'll give you the picture.'

"When my husband returned to his company's main office, he learned he had been in
error about the amount. He was not charged ten dollars. Our picture is on our wall.
And it costs us nothing." . . . A. A.

Of R. L. who writes the following letter it must be said:

"In faith. Lady, you have a merry heart."

"One day, during a bus strike, I needed to go into the downtown area and had to walk
ten blocks from my home to the nearest bus in operation. Before starting home I
recalled there was no food market on this new route and I wouldn't be able to shop for
dinner. I had enough to manage a 'pot luck' meal but I would need bread. After
shopping all day, the ten blocks back from the bus line was all I could manage and to
go still farther to shop for bread was out of the question.

"I stood very still for a moment and allowed a vision of bread to 'dance in my head.'
Then I started for home. When I boarded the bus I was so tired I grabbed the first
available seat and almost sat on a paper bag. Now, on a crowded bus tired passengers
rarely look directly at one another, so being naturally curious, I peeked into the bag.
Of course it was a loaf of bread — not just any bread but the very same brand of
bread I always buy!" . . . R.L.

Trifles: all trifles — but they produced their trivia without price. Imagining
accomplished these things without the means generally reputed necessary to do so.
Man rates wealth in a way that bears no relation to real values.

"Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." — Isaiah. 55:1

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CHAPTER 14

THE CREATIVE MOMENT

"The natural man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to
him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. " . .
. I Cor. 2:14.

"There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find, Nor can his Watch Fiends
find it; but the Industrious find This Moment & it multiply, & when it once is found It
renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed. " — Blake

Whenever we imagine things as they ought to be, rather than as they seem to be, is
"The Moment." For in that moment the spiritual man's work is done and all the great
events of time start forth to mould a world in harmony with that moment's altered
pattern.

Satan, Blake writes, is a "Reactor." He never acts; he only reacts. And if our attitude
to the happenings of the day is "reactionary" are we not playing Satan's part? Man is
only reacting in his natural or Satan state; he never acts or creates, he only re-acts or
re-creates. One real creative moment, one real feeling of the wish fulfilled, is worth
more than the whole natural life of re-action. In such a moment God's work is done.
Once more we may say with Blake,

"God only Acts and Is, in existing beings or Men."

There is an imaginal past and an imaginal future. If, by reacting, the past is re-created
into the present — so — by acting out our dreams of fancy can the future be brought
into the present.

"I feel now the future in the instant."

The spiritual man Acts: for him, anything that he wants to do, he can do and do at
once — in his imagination — and his motto is always, "The Moment is Now."

"Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." — 2 Cor.
6:2

Nothing stands between man and the fulfillment of his dream but facts: And facts are
the creations of imagining. If man changes his imagining, he will change the facts.

This story tells of a young woman who found the Moment and, by acting out her
dream of fancy, brought the future into the instant, not realizing what she had done
until the final scene.

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"The incident related below must appear to be coincidence to those never exposed to
your teaching — but I know I observed an imaginative act take solid form in, perhaps,
four minutes. I believe you will be interested in reading this account, written down,
exactly as it happened, a few minutes after the actual occurrence, yesterday morning.

"I was driving my car east on Sunset Boulevard, in the center lane of traffic, braking
slowly to stop for a red signal at a three-way intersection, when my attention was
caught by the sight of an elderly lady, dressed all in grey, running across the street in
front of my car. Her arm was raised, signaling to the driver of a bus which was
beginning to pull away from the curb. She was obviously attempting to cross in front
of the bus to delay it. The driver slowed his vehicle and I thought would allow her to
enter. Instead, as she jumped on to the curb, the bus pulled away leaving her standing
just in the act of lowering her arm. She turned and walked swiftly toward a nearby
phone booth.

"As my signal changed to green and I put my car in motion, I wished I had been
behind the bus and had been able to offer her a ride. Her extreme agitation was
obvious even from the distance I was away from her. My wish instantly fulfilled itself
in a mental drama, and as I drove away, the fancy played itself out in the following
scene . . .

". . . I opened the car door and a lady dressed in grey stepped in, smilingly relieved
and thanking me profusely. She was out of breath from running and said, 'I only have
a few blocks to go. I'm meeting friends and I was so afraid they would leave without
me when I missed my bus.' I left my imaginary lady out a few blocks farther on and
she was delighted to observe her friends still waiting for her. She thanked me again
and walked away ..."

"The entire mental scene was spanned in the time it takes to drive one block at a
normal rate of speed. The fancy satisfied my feelings regarding the 'real' incident, and
I immediately forgot it. Four blocks farther, I was still in the center lane and again
had to stop for a red signal. My attention at this time was turned inward on something
I have now forgotten, when suddenly someone tapped on the closed window of my
car and I looked up to see a lovely-appearing elderly lady with grey hair, dressed all
in grey. Smiling, she asked if she might ride a few blocks with me as she had missed
her bus. She was out of breath, as though from running, and I was so stunned by her
sudden appearance in the middle of a busy street at my window that for a moment I
could only react physically, and without answering, leaned over and opened my car
door. She got in and said, 'It's so annoying to rush so and then miss a bus. I wouldn't
have imposed on you like this, but I'm supposed to meet some friends a few blocks
down the street and if I had to walk now, I would miss them.' Six blocks farther on,
she exclaimed, 'Oh, good! They're still waiting for me.' I let her out and she thanked
me again and walked away.

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"I'm afraid I drove to my own destination by automatic reflex, for I had fully
recognized that I had just observed a waking dream take form in physical action. I
recognized what was happening while it was happening. As soon as I could, I wrote
down each part of the incident and found a startling consistency between the 'waking
dream' and the subsequent 'reality.' Both women were elderly, gracious in manner,
dressed all in grey, and out of breath from hurrying to catch a bus and missing it. Both
wished to meet friends (who for some reason could not wait for them much longer)
and both left my car within the space of a few blocks after successfully completing
their contact with their friends.

"I am amazed, confounded and elated! If there is no such thing as coincidence or
accident — then I witnessed imagination become 'reality' almost instantaneously." . . .
J.R.B.

"There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find. Nor can his Watch Fiends
find it; but the Industrious find This Moment & it multiply, & when it once is found It
renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed."

"From the first time I read your 'Search' I have longed to experience a vision. Since
you have told us of the 'Promise' this desire has been intensified. I want to tell you of
my vision which was a glorious answer to my prayer; but I am sure I would not have
had this experience were it not for something that occurred two weeks ago.

"It was necessary for me to park my car some distance from the University Building
where I was scheduled to conduct my class. As I left my car I was conscious of the
stillness about me. The street was completely deserted; no one was in sight.

"Suddenly I heard a most frightful cursing voice. I looked toward the sound and saw a
man brandishing a cane, yelling, between vile words, 'I'll kill you. I'll kill you.' I
continued on as he approached me, for at that moment I thought 'Now I can test what
I have professed to believe; if I do believe we are one, The Father, this derelict and I,
no harm can come to me. At that moment I had no fear. Instead of seeing a man
coming toward me, I felt a light. He stopped yelling, dropped his cane and walked
quietly as we passed with less than a foot between us.

"Having tested my faith at that moment, everything about me had seemed more alive
than before — flowers brighter and trees greener. I have had a sense of peace and the
'oneness' of life I had not known before.

"Last Friday I drove to our country home — nothing was unusual about the day or
evening. I worked on a manuscript and not being tired did not try to fall off to sleep
until around two the following morning. Then I turned off the light and drifted into
that floating sensation, not asleep but drowsy, as I call it, half awake and half asleep.

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Often, while in this state — lovely, unknown faces float before me — but this
morning the experience was different. A perfect face of a child came before me in
profile — then it turned and smiled at me. It was glowing with light and seemed to fill
my own head with light.

"I was aglow and excited and thought 'this must be the Christos'; but something
within me, without sound, said, 'No, this is you.' I feel I will never be the same again
and some day I may experience the 'Promise.' "... G.B.

Our dreams will all be realized from the time that we know that Imagining Creates
Reality — and Act. But Imagination seeks from us something much deeper and more
fundamental than creating things: nothing less indeed than the recognition of its own
oneness, with God; that what it does is, in reality, God Himself doing it in and
through Man who is All Imagination.

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CHAPTER 15

"THE PROMISE"

Four Mystical Experiences

In all I have related thus far — with the exception of G.B.'s Vision of the child —
imagination was consciously exercised. Men and women created stage plays in their
imagination, plays implying the fulfillment of their desires. Then, by imagining
themselves participating in these dramas they created that which their imaginal acts
implied. This is the wise use of God's law. But "No man is justified before God by the
law." Gal. 3.11.

Many people are interested in Imaginism as a way of life, but are not at all interested
in its framework of faith, a faith leading to the fulfillment of God's promise. "I will
raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body ... I will be his
father, and he shall be my son." 2 Sam. 7:12-14.

The promise that God will bring forth from our body a son who will be "born, not of
blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" does not concern
them. They want to know God's law, not His promise. However, this miraculous birth
has been stated clearly as a must for all mankind from the earliest days of the
Christian fellowship. "You must be bom from above," John. 3.7. My purpose here is
to state it again and to state it in such language and with such reference to my own
personal mystical experiences that the reader will see that this birth "from above" is
far more than a part of a dispensable superstructure, that it is the sole puipose for
God's creation.

Specifically, my purpose in recording these four mystical experiences is to show what
"Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead" (Rev. 1.5) was trying to
say about this birth from above. "How can men preach unless they are sent?" Rom.
10.15.

Many years ago, I was taken in spirit into a Divine Society, a Society of men in whom
God is awake. Though it may seem strange, the gods do truly meet. As I entered this
society, the first to greet me was the embodiment of infinite Might. His was a power
unknown to mortals. I was then taken to meet infinite Love. He asked me, "What is
the greatest thing in the world?" I answered him in the words of Paul, "faith, hope,
and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." At that moment, he embraced
me and our bodies fused and became one body. I was knit to him and loved him as
my own soul. The words, "love of God" so often a mere phrase, were now a reality
with a tremendous meaning. Nothing ever imagined by man could be compared with
this love which man feels through his union with Love. The most intimate

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relationship on earth is like living in separate cells compared with this union.

While I was in this state of supreme delight, a voice from outer space shouted, "Down
with the blue bloods ! " At this blast, I found myself standing before the one who had
first greeted me, he who embodied infinite Might. He looked into my eyes and
without the use of words or mouth, I heard what he told me: "Time to act." I was
suddenly whisked out of that Divine Society and returned to earth. I was tormented by
my limitations of understanding but I knew that on that day the Divine Society had
chosen me as a companion and sent me to preach Christ — God's promise to man.

My mystical experiences have brought me to accept literally, the saying that all the
world's a stage. And to believe that God plays all the parts. The puipose of the play?
To transform man, the created, into God, the creator. God loved man, his created, and
became man in faith that this act of self-commission would transform man — the
created, into God — the creator.

The play begins with the crucifixion of God on man — as man — and ends with the
resurrection of man — as God. God becomes as we are, that we may be as He is. God
becomes man that man may become, first — a living being, and secondly — a life-
giving spirit.

"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in
me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me
and gave himself for me." — Gal. 2:20

God took upon Himself the form of man and became obedient unto death — even
death on the cross of man — and is crucified on Golgotha, the skull of man. God
himself enters death's door — the human skull — and lies down in the grave of man
to make man a living being. God's mercy turned death into sleep. Then began the
prodigious and unthinkable metamoiphosis of man, the transformation of man into
God.

No man, unaided by the crucifixion of God, could cross the threshold that admits to
conscious life, but now we have union with God in His crucified self. He lives in us
as our wonderful human imagination. "Man is all imagination, and God is man, and
exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination — that is, God,
himself." When He rises in us we will be like Him and He will be like us. Then all
impossibilities will dissolve in us at that touch of exaltation which His rising in us
will impart to our nature.

Here is the secret of the world: God died to give man life and to set man free, for
however clearly God is aware of His creation, it does not follow that man,
imaginatively created, is aware of God. To work this miracle God had to die, then rise

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again as man, and none has ever expressed it so clearly as William Blake. Blake says
— or rather has Jesus say — "Unless I die, thou canst not live; but if I die I shall arise
again and thou with me. Wouldest thou love one who never died for thee, or ever die
for one who had not died for thee? And if God dieth not for man and giveth not
himself eternally for man, man could not exist."

So God dies — that is to say — God has freely given himself for man. Deliberately,
He has become man and has forgotten that He is God, in the hope that man, thus
created, will eventually rise as God. God has so completely offered His own self for
man, that He cries out on the cross of man, "My God, my God; why hast thou
forsaken me?" He has completely forgotten that He is God. But after God rises in one
man, that man will say to his brothers, "Why stand we here, trembling around, calling
on God for help, and not ourselves, in whom God dwells?"

This first man that has been raised from the dead is known as Jesus Christ — the first
fruits of those who have fallen asleep, the first-born of the dead. For man God died;
now, by a man, has come also the resurrection of the dead. Jesus Christ resurrects his
dead Father by becoming his father. In Adam — the universal man — God sleeps. In
Jesus Christ — the individualized God — God wakes. In waking, man the created, has
become God, the creator, and can truly say, "Before the world was, I am." Just as God
in His love for man so completely identified Himself with man that He forgot that He
was God, so man in his love for God must so completely identify himself with God
that he lives the life of God, that is, Imaginatively.

God's play which transforms man into God is revealed to us in the Bible. It is
completely consistent in imagery and symbolism. The New Testament is hid in the
Old Testament, and the old is manifested in the new. The Bible is a vision of God's
Law and His Promise. It was never intended to teach history but rather to lead man in
faith through the furnaces of affliction to the fulfillment of God's promise, to rouse
man from this profound sleep and awaken him as God. Its characters live not in the
past but in an imaginative eternity. They are personifications of the eternal spiritual
states of the soul. They mark man's journey through eternal death and his awakening
to eternal life.

The Old Testament tells us of God's promise. The New Testament tells us not how
this promise was fulfilled but how it is fulfilled. The central theme of the Bible is the
direct, individual, mystical experience of the birth of the child, that child of whom the
prophet spoke "... to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will
be upon his shoulder; and his name will be called, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty
God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of
peace, there will be no end ..." Isaiah 9:6-7

When the child is revealed to us we see it, we experience it, and the response to this

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revelation can be stated in the words of Job, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of
the ear, but now my eye sees thee." The story of the incarnation is not fable, allegory
or some carefully contrived fiction to enslave the minds of men, but mystical fact. It
is a personal mystical experience of the birth of oneself out of one's own skull,
symbolized in the birth of a child, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying on the
floor.

There is a distinction between hearing of this birth of a child from one's own skull —
a birth which no scientist or historian could ever possibly explain — and actually
experiencing the birth — holding in your own hands and seeing with your own eyes
this miraculous child — a child born from above out of your own skull, a birth
contrary to all the laws of nature. The question as it is posed in the Old Testament,
"Ask now, and see, can a male bear a child? Why then do I see every man with his
hands delivering himself like a woman in labor? Why has every face turned pale?"
Jer: 30.6. The Hebrew word "chalats" mistranslated "loins" means: to draw out, to
deliver, to withdraw self. The drawing of oneself out of one's own skull was exactly
what the prophet foresaw as the necessary birth from above, a birth giving man
entrance into the kingdom of God and reflective perception on the highest levels of
Being. Throughout the ages "Deep calls to deep . . . Rouse thyself! Why sleepest
thou, O Lord? Awake!"

The event, as it is recorded in the Gospels, actually takes place in man. But of that
day or that hour when the time will come for the individual to be delivered, no one
knows but the Father. "Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born from
above. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not
know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the
Spirit." John: 3:7-8

This revelation in the Gospel of John is true. Here is my experience of this birth from
above. Like Paul, I did not receive it from man — nor was I taught it. It came through
the actual mystical experience of being born from above. None can speak truly of this
mystical birth from above but one who has experienced it. I had no idea that this birth
from above was literally true. Who, before the experience, could believe that the
child, the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of
Peace was inwoven in his own skull? Who, before the experience, would understand
that his Maker is his Husband and the Lord of Hosts is His Name? Who would
believe that the creator went in unto His own creation, man, and knew it to be
Himself and that this entrance into the skull of man — this union of God and man —
resulted in the birth of a Son out of the skull of man; which birth gave to that man
eternal life and union with his creator forever?

If I now tell what I experienced that night I do so not to impose my ideas on others
but that I may give hope to those who, like Nicodemus, wonder how can a man be

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born when he is old? How can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be
born? How can this be? This is how it happened to me. Therefore, I will now "write
the vision"; and "make it plain upon tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the
vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end — it will not lie. If it seem slow, wait for
it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Behold, he whose soul is not upright in him
shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faith." Hab. 2:2-4.

In the early hours of the morning on July 20, 1959, in the city of San Francisco, a
heavenly dream in which the arts flourished was suddenly interrupted by the most
intense vibration centered at the base of my skull. Then a drama, as real as those I
experience when I am fully awake, began to unfold. I awoke from a dream to find
myself completely entombed within my skull. I tried to force my way out through its
base. Something gave way and I felt myself move head downward, through the base
of my skull. I squeezed myself out, inch by inch. When I was almost out, I held what
I took to be the foot of the bed and pulled the remaining portion of me out of my
skull. There, on the floor, I lay for a few seconds.

Then I rose and looked at my body on the bed. It was pale of face lying on its back
and tossing from side to side like one in recovery from a great ordeal. As I
contemplated it, hoping that it would not fall off the bed, I became aware that the
vibration which started the whole drama was not only in my head but now was also
coming from the corner of the room. As I looked over to that corner I wondered if
that vibration could be caused by a very high wind, a wind strong enough to vibrate
the window. I did not realize that the vibration which I still felt within my head was
related to that which seemed to be coming from the corner of the room.

Looking back to the bed, I discovered that my body was gone but in its place sat my
three older brothers. My oldest brother sat where the head was. My second and third
brothers sat where the feet were. None seemed to be aware of me, although I was
aware of them and could discern their thoughts. I suddenly became aware of the
reality of my own invisibility. I noticed that they, too, were disturbed by the vibration
coming from the corner of the room. My third brother was the most disturbed and
went over to investigate the cause of the disturbance. His attention was attracted by
something on the floor and looking down he announced, "It's Neville's baby." My
other two brothers, in most incredulous voices, asked "How can Neville have a
baby?"

My brother lifted the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid him on the bed. I,
then, with my invisible hands lifted the babe and asked him "How is my sweetheart?"
He looked into my eyes and smiled and I awoke in this world — to ponder this
greatest of my many mystical experiences.

Tennyson has a description of Death as a warrior — a skeleton "high on a night-black

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horse," issuing forth at midnight. But when Gareth's sword cut through the skull, there
was in it. . .

". . . the bright face of a blooming boy Fresh as a flower new-born." (Idylls of the
King)

Two other visions I will tell because they bear out the truth of my assertion that the
Bible is mystical fact, that everything written about the promised child in the law of
Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be mystically experienced in the
imagination of the individual. The child's birth is a sign and a portent, signalling the
resurrection of David, the Lord's anointed, of whom He said, "You are my son, today
I have begotten you." — Psalms 2:7

Five months after the birth of the child, on the morning of December 6, 1959, in the
city of Los Angeles, a vibration similar to the one which preceded his birth started in
my head. This time its intensity was centered at the top of my head. Then came a
sudden explosion and I found myself in a modestly furnished room. There, leaning
against the side of an open door was my son David of Biblical fame. He was a lad in
his early teens. What struck me forcibly about him was the unusual beauty of his face
and figure. He was — as he is described in the first book of Samuel — ruddy, with
beautiful eyes and very handsome.

Not for one moment did I feel myself to be anyone other than who I am now. Yet, I
knew that this lad, David, was my son, and he knew that I was his father; for "the
wisdom from above is without uncertainty." As I sat there contemplating the beauty
of my son, the vision faded and I awoke.

" 'I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from
the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.' Is. 8.18. God gave me David as my
very own son. 'I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your
body ... I will be his father, and he shall be my son.' 2 Sam. 7.12-14. God is known
in no other way than through the Son.

" 'No one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the
Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.' Luke. 10.22. The
experience of being David's Father is the end of man's pilgrimage on earth. The
purpose of life is to find the Father of David, the Lord's anointed, the Christ. 'Abner,
whose son is this youth?' And Abner said, 'As your soul lives, O king, I cannot tell.'
And the king said, 'Inquire whose son the stripling is.' And as David returned from the
slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul with the head
of the Philistine in his hand. And Saul said to him, 'Whose son are you, young man?'
And David answered, 'I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.' 1 Sam:
17:55-58. Jesse is any form of the verb 'to be.' In other words, I Am the Son of who I

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Am, I am self begotten, I Am the Son of God, the Father. I And my Father are one. I
am the image of the invisible God. He who has seen me has seen the Father.

" 'Whose son . . . ?' is not about David but about David's Father, whom the king had
promised (1 Sam: 17:25) to make free in Israel. Note: in all these passages (1 Sam:
17:55,56,58) the king's inquiry is not about David but about David's Father. 'I have
found David, my servant; ... He shall cry to me, "Thou art my Father, my God, and
the Rock of my salvation. And I will make him the first-born, the highest of the kings
of the earth.' " — Psalms. 89.

The individual who is born from above will find David and know him to be his very
own son. Then he will ask the Pharisees — who are always with us — "What do you
think of the Christ? Whose son is he?" And when they say to him, "The son of
David." He will say to them, "How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord .
. . If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?" Matt: 22.41-45. Man's
misconception of the role of the Son — which is only a sign and a portent — has
made the Son an idol. "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." 1 John. 5.21.

God awakes; and that man in whom he awakes becomes his own father's father. He
who was David's son, "Jesus Christ, the son of David" Matt: 1.1. has become David's
Father.

No longer will I cry to "our father David, thy child." Acts. 4.25. "I have found
David." He has cried to me, "Thou art my Father." Ps. 89. Now I know myself to be
one of the Elohim, the God who became man, that man may become God. "Great
indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion." 1 Tim. 3.16. If the Bible were
history it would not be a mystery. "Wait for the promise of the Father." Acts. 1.4. that
is, for David — God's Son — who will reveal you as the Father. This promise, says
Jesus, you heard from me (Luke 24:49) and to its fulfillment at that moment in time
when it pleases God to give you his Son — as "your offspring, which is Christ." Gal.
3.16.

A figure of speech is used for the purpose of calling attention to, emphasizing and
intensifying the reality of the literal sense. The truth is literal; the words used are
figurative. "The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, and the
earth shook and the rocks were split." Matt: 27.51.

On the morning of April 8, 1960 — four months after it was revealed to me that I am
David's father — a bolt of lightning out of my skull split me in two from the top of my
skull to the base of my spine. I was cleft as though I were a tree that had been struck
by lightning. Then I felt and saw myself as a golden liquid light moving up my spine
in a serpentine motion; as I entered my skull it vibrated like an earthquake. "Every
word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to

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his words, lest he rebuke you, and you be found a liar." "And as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up." John. 3.14.

These mystical experiences will help to rescue the Bible from the externals of history,
persons and events, and to restore it to its real significance in the life of man.
Scripture must be fulfilled "in" us. God's promise will be fulfilled. You will have
these experiences: "And you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and
Sa-ma-ri-a and to the end of the earth." Acts. 1:8.

The widening circle — Jerusalem . . . Judea . . . Samaria the end of the earth — is
God's plan.

The Promise is still maturing to its time, its appointed time, but how long, vast and
severe the trials e're you find David, your son, who will reveal you as God, The
Father, were long to tell; but it hastens to the end; it will not fail. So wait, for there
will be no postponement.

"Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, in
the spring, and Sarah shall have a son." Gen. 18:14.

The End

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